Hard to Protect (Black Ops Heroes)

by Black, Incy

  The abrupt change in subject wasn’t subtle. He was telling her that any further discussion about his career, his mother, and his future was closed.

  She nodded about the lamp.

  It felt like five lifetimes later, and still she couldn’t sleep. She hoped Will was comfortable in his hammock because the table she was lying on was not. She only had to inhale too deep, and the sheets of tin beneath her groaned and twanged embarrassingly loud.

  So, flat on her back, Rhys’s sleeping bag opened and used for padding because Will had been wrong about it cooling down, she held herself stiff and unmoving. Counting the tessellated bricks making up the vaulted ceiling above her—for the billionth time.

  “Will, are you awake?” she call-whispered.

  “Trying not to be. Go to sleep,” he grunted.

  She was so over counting bricks. “I’ve worked it out. Why Rhys has those rats locked in cages.”

  “Sleep.”

  She bloody wished that she could. Nine cages stacked one on top of the other, in rows and columns of three like a tic-tac-toe grid. Three separate tic-tac-toe grids—A, B, and C. Not that Rhys had labeled them, but she knew. She knew. She’d seen the same tri-pattern when visiting Rhys’s lab.

  One grouping—BT11: the original formula.

  A second grouping—BT11: the refined formula.

  The third grouping—the Control. Neutral specimens. Uninfected.

  But which grouping was which?

  “Don’t think about it, Angel. Focus on the fact that those cages mean Rhys is coming back.”

  Will Berwick could read minds? She damn near levitated off the table. Some of the thoughts she’d had about him had been personal, and X-rated. She counted off a series of deep inhales and exhales, uncaring of the table’s tinny protests. Bricks, counting bricks, not boring at all.

  “Will, just to say, I’m kind of relieved you’re here with me,” she forced out, having just counted off five hundred and seventy-three with at least several thousand numbers ahead of her to go. “I don’t think I could deal with this on my own,” she shared in a whisper.

  Silence…

  “Angel, do you need me to come and lie on that table with you?”

  What? No. Yes. Never. Maybe. “No. I’m just going to go to sleep now. Very tired. Very, very tired.” She faked a deep yawn. She also pressed both hands to her chest to stop her heart escaping her chest. It must have taken at least a good five minutes before the battle was done, and she was able to breathe easy again.

  “Will?”

  “For the love of Christ… What?”

  “I promise never to tell anyone about your fear of rats.”

  No response, so she added, “Rhys broke our blood oath first, Will. I’d never have wished him dead otherwise. I don’t break promises. Ever.”

  A sigh. A rustle. A soft thud. “Move over.”

  Claps of tinny thunder shattered the quiet as Will rolled onto the table, slid an arm beneath her, and adjusted her position so her head rested on his chest. “Now will you go to sleep?”

  “I’ll try… But I’m worried the table won’t hold.”

  “It’ll hold.”

  She envied him. Envied that he could be so damn sure. About everything—except Diana. How could she move him past that torment? Would she ever get the chance? And if she didn’t, who would help him?

  Some time later, the smooth gentle rhythm of his chest rising and falling beneath her cheek told her Will had been lucky enough to find sleep.

  “I’m sorry if I disappoint you, but Rhys broke his promise first,” she whispered, not wanting to wake him. “And I just haven’t got it in me to forgive him.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  A week and four days, Rhys still hadn’t showed. Their food supply was at a critical level; six out of the eight lamps had died. The eggshells he and Angel had initially tried to walk on around each other had long since been crushed flat.

  Inevitable, given the intimate routine they’d fallen into—and which was doing precious little to shore up his determination to resist the dangerous feelings she awoke in him. Holding her close, all soft and warm, breathing her in, though he knew he shouldn’t.

  He’d start each night in his loathed hammock—its volume wrapped around him reminded him too much of a shroud. Angel would get chatty, invariably, just as he was drifting off. He’d have to struggle free from his death-wrap, stumble the nine feet separating them, slide up onto her table, and wrap her in his arms just to get her to shut up and allow him some sleep.

  Easy—not.

  Not when he knew that for each moment she spent draped over him in the search for peace, she stole a little bit more of him. Christ, how was he supposed to ever let her go? Would there be enough of him left to function when she left?

  Not such an imminent problem, now. Given what had just happened.

  She’d been nuzzling him. Not the other way around. And still she’d had the nerve to screech at him for not putting a stop to it.

  He’d been hard, a pillar of marble and hurting, unable to believe his luck. Her, all soft and warm, pressing and rubbing up against his naked chest, cute little noises humming in her throat. Her mouth hot and moist, trailing his pecs, her playful tongue lapping the ridges and dips of his abs. No fucking way had he been about to shut that down.

  Then, waking, her mouth deliciously close to his straining cock making a circus big top out of his scrub pants, she’d gone all banshee on him. Castigating him, when she’d been the naughty one. Him, just lying there like a perfect gentleman. His only crime: not wanting to interrupt her sexy sleepy meanderings.

  He was half inclined to reach down, fist himself, and finish the job she’d started. The temper on that woman when she was on BT11—she wouldn’t return from the corridor down which she’d stormed and was no doubt pacing a trench into, for a while yet.

  A loud metallic crash sounded. He launched off the table. She couldn’t have been so stupid as to enter the rat room on her own.

  Angel had insisted on visiting the rats once a day—but never without him by her side. He’d forbidden it—with the excuse of checking their food and water supply, despite the fact that Rhys had rigged up a hosepipe to drip into the cages, and had set timed food drops from three huge funnel contraptions screwed to the wall.

  And he’d given her that lie, knowing that if she saw the rats were doing just fine, she’d stop stressing about a psychotic break being imminent. A fear that plagued her, even although Rhys had reassured her that such an event was unlikely because he’d refined the formula.

  Will belted the length of the corridor—no need to shoulder crash the door at the bottom; she’d left it open—and flung himself into the rat room upon the walls of which Angel’s huge shadow danced grotesquely in the dimmed light of the lantern she’d set on the floor.

  Her hair a whirlwind as she raced from cage to cage, she was clawing frantically at the cage fastenings, desperate to set the creatures free.

  Lunging forward, he caught her and thought he had her held fast, but she bucked free and went for him, hissing and scratching. Untrained as she was, her blows, elbows, and feet were easy to dodge, but not to contain. The frenzy she was in, she was more in danger of damaging herself than him, or so he figured until her knee came a little too close to unmanning him, skimming off his hip bone as he twisted—in the nick of time—clear.

  Picking her up, ignoring her fury, her hammering heels at his shins, he wrestled her back down the corridor, across the admin slash sleeping area and into the tiny bathroom. Where he stuck her, fully clothed, under the frigid downpour of the shower and left her to it.

  Then he raced back to the room to ascertain WTF.

  The rats—four to a cage—in the batch of nine nearest the door, had torn each other apart. As in shredded, blood dripping the tiers of cages, little sacks of guts exposed.

  Telling himself those must be the rats injected with the original BT11 serum, his body and mind locked down tight against any oth
er option, he’d quit the room. And to make damn sure Angel had no hope of getting back in there, after shutting the door, he’d hauled every box, crate, and stick of furniture from the cells across the doorway.

  Then he went back to his number one priority—getting Angel and him the fuck out of there.

  Breathing hard, he stepped back from kicking the crap out of two adjoining bars. A shudder, a fractional movement from both. It wasn’t much, but he’d take it. After witnessing Angel lose her mind not two hours ago, he’d take a lick from Jeffrey Dahmer if it got her to the surface quicker.

  He wedged his shoulder between the bars and, his full body weight behind it, tried to leverage another whisker of movement from the iron. Yup, definitely some give.

  Dropping into position on the floor, cross-legged, leaning forward, he started stabbing and scratching away at the concrete with the metal shiv he’d managed to fashion out of the saucepan handle. Just as he’d done for the last eleven days straight, digging away for two five-hour stretches at a time.

  He bloody hoped the roots of the bars weren’t buried much deeper. He could barely straighten his fingers for nicks and swelling as it was.

  “I apologize for my behavior this morning. I should have shown more self-control.”

  He glanced at Angel over his shoulder. She’d been quiet and subdued these past hours, but it was the tautness with which she held her body that concerned him. He wanted to tell her to forget it, to make the guilt she so obviously carried lighter by dismissing the incident. But to do that would be to insult her. Because they both knew mammoths would rise and walk again before either of them forgot what had happened.

  She straightened her shoulders, one hand holding forward a clutch of bright yellow zip ties. “You need to restrain me,” she said.

  His blood iced, then flowed hot enough to melt the iron bars in front of him. He grappled the spike of temper and leashed it tight. “There was nothing abnormal about your reaction, Angel. In your situation, shot up with a drug, the side effects unknown but anticipating the worst, anyone would have lost their shit. So no, I won’t be fucking restraining you.”

  “You’re in denial, your safe place. But you’re going to need these zip ties sooner or later. I’ll just put them on the shelf where they will be easy to find,” Angel responded, her tone flat and disconnected. “I’ve washed all the scrubs. They shouldn’t take long to dry in these hot draughts.”

  The scrubs would dry quickly, because from all the slapped splashing and rubbing he’d heard, she must have chaffed the cotton of each garment gossamer-thin. He looked at her knuckles. Red and raw. Yup, she’d vented her anxiety out on the cloth.

  “I know coffee’s almost out, sweetheart,” he said softly. “But I figure we’ve both earned an extra mug. Yeah?”

  “I’ll see to it now,” she responded robotically.

  He smiled encouragement. She lowered a slow blink and turned away.

  Fuck. She’d locked down completely. Removed herself to some desolate zone deep inside where she would deal with her terror alone. That frigid self-control Rhys had scared her into always keeping to the fore, firmly in place.

  He had no clue what number of poison-dipped nails her brother had driven into her skull over the years, but it was clear Angel had reverted. Reverted back to the state of emotional extinction she believed would keep her safe from harming others.

  Fucking Rhys.

  He returned to his chiseling with renewed vigor.

  He’d partially unveiled his Angel—the wildly sexy woman who’d rode a monster of a bike and who had stripped from her leathers to tease him. The recklessly unafraid woman who had cat-walked his corridor with stunning confidence, her every step and sway daring him to join her for a shower. The feisty, funny, unpredictable woman who took no shit from him. So stealthy about putting him in his place, her retaliation neither obvious nor immediate, but she had a sneaky way of getting him to revisit his actions or decisions, especially those she didn’t like, and apologize for them. That was the woman he wanted back. That was the woman who’d gotten under his skin and he kind of liked having her there.

  So, no, he would not sanction the return of Rhys’s repressed Ice Queen.

  The sharpen saucepan handle slipped, gouging a chunk from his palm. He cursed up a blue streak, and not just at the pain. Freeing Angel to be all she could be—should be—would take patience and time. He wasn’t exactly a patient man. And after Diana, he’d foresworn anything long-term beyond his job. Fuck.

  Angel might have laid down the second Ice Age, but she didn’t protest when, later that night and having extinguished the last two lamps to conserve what little battery power was left, he slid onto the table beside her, rather than clambering into his hammock.

  Curling her into his side, he tucked her close across his chest, hoping to God that steel of his arms around her and the steady, resolute thump of his heart would be enough to convince her neither to argue nor delve for an explanation.

  Because it wasn’t like he knew what the hell he was doing. Other than that holding her felt right—despite the risk that he might be playing with fire.

  What he did know was that he liked when this beautiful, complex woman was quiet and lost in thought. He liked when she was in a snit and being mouthy. He liked when she smiled, and he liked when she glared. Fuck, he even liked her ice—when it wasn’t directed against him. And though he couldn’t offer her long-term, he could offer her now.

  Well, if she hadn’t protested his presence in her bed by now, she wasn’t going to. He relaxed the tight in his muscles and allowed himself to drift.

  “Will?”

  He smiled. The moment he’d been waiting for. “Hmm?”

  He also liked how Angel would wait for that precise tipping point where he balanced between drowsy consciousness and full slumber, to start sharing. He prepared to be thrown through a loop.

  “I can’t breathe, Will.”

  He gave her a gentle squeeze and tugged her closer. Ready to catch her from wherever she was falling.

  “I haven’t taken a full breath since Cymion Gray. Nearly twenty years of half-breaths, snatched breaths, tight breaths, too scared of being me.”

  His eyelids snapped open. One day he’d get her to a place where, when she shared something deeply personal, it would be about something other than pain.”

  “But this, Will. This feeling that I’m burning up. That what’s flowing my veins is eroding me from the inside… I’m suffocating, Will.”

  Not on his shift she wasn’t. “One second,” he told her, jostling her from him. “Just give me one damn second.”

  He slid from the table—metal plinking and plunking. He batted away the scrubs Angel had hung on a line made from discarded cabling and located the lamp, which turned on to the barest of flickers—because another bloody battery was dying.

  Then, back on the table, stretched alongside her but his upper half braced over her, he closed in so she’d not just hear his promise, she’d see it written in his face.

  He smoothed aside stray tangles of her fantastic hair, his thumb tracing the hollow beneath her cheekbone, the curve of her chin, the plumpness of her lower lip. Christ, a blind man unable to behold astounding beauty with his eyes would nevertheless know what he’d just touched with one soft trace of her face.

  “You have to hang tight for a little bit longer, Angel. I don’t yet know how, but I will fix it so you get to breathe deep. So deep there’s a danger you might float away. I’m not sure I like the away part, but at least you’ll be floating free. Yeah?”

  “I’m thinking of going to Italy to wash car windshields,” she blurted, as he was learning she tended to do when things got too intense.

  He eased onto his back, rolling her so she again rested on his chest, and grinned. “That’s one hell of an ambition, Sunshine.”

  “I want to feel the sun on my back,” she muttered huffily, trying to escape his hold.

  “Settle, Angel. I wasn’t judging. Too busy
imagining you in short-shorts and a bikini top, and wondering how many times I’d get to circle the block for another look before you lobbed a soggy sponge in my face. Now do you think we can try and get some sleep?”

  He felt her shuffle, settling down. “I think so,” she murmured.

  He wasn’t holding his breath.

  She broadsided him not ten minutes later.

  “I need you, Will,” she whispered.

  “And I’ll be there for you, Angel.”

  “No, I mean I need you now. I want a memory I can wrap myself in when the fear and revulsion gets so bad, I want to rip down to my veins to let my blood leak free.

  She lifted his hand and steered it beneath her scrub top, flattening his palm over the scars she’d inflicted on herself. “I stopped cutting in my late teens when it finally dawned on me I was stuck with the taint of violence, and I started building tiny inconsequential memories and dreams instead. Like the thrill of riding my bike. Like escaping to live abroad,” she said quietly, guiding his hand higher to cover one breast.

  A breast so smooth and firm and perky and full, he’d have deserved a one-way ticket to icy Neptune for not giving it an exploratory squeeze. Christ, it took all he had to rein back his urge to rip off her top and check that his fingers weren’t lying about perfect.

  “I need a new memory, Will. A huge one. A strong indelible one that will stay with me forever and never fade.”

  Jesus. No pressure there, then. He knew exactly what she was asking for, his body saying yes, his mind, no, she was too vulnerable right now. “Not sure this table is up to it, sweetheart. I like my sex vigorous and energetic.” That should annoy her enough to find solace in a different direction. Please.

  She tensed. “Don’t do that. Don’t trivialize this. And don’t trivialize yourself.”

  He smoothed the pad of his thump across the curve of her breast. “We’re two-hundred feet below ground, lying on what sounds like the un-tuned pan of a Caribbean steel drum, sweetheart.