Hidden Hearts

by Eva Chase

  “Carina,” I murmured, and caught her mouth again. A whimper crept from her throat as I caressed her thigh where the skirt of her dress had ridden up. She arched against me, and my whole body caught fire.

  “This is all right, isn’t it?” she said breathlessly against my lips. “I want you so fucking badly.”

  I gave a choked laugh, the words making me even hotter. “Do I look like I’m complaining?”

  I kissed her more deeply, my tongue teasing over hers. She made an encouraging sound as she fumbled with the fly of my jeans. Oh, God. I ran my hands up her body to cup her breasts and was rewarded with a full-out moan.

  She yanked my zipper down and eased back so I could kick off my jeans. As I did, she shimmied out of her panties. The sight of them dropping to the floor from beneath her dress was the sexiest thing I’d ever seen. Then she was kneeling over me again, her fingers branding my jaw as she kissed me hard, her dress pooled on my lap. She rocked against me as I clutched her to me, my erection straining against my boxers.

  The last thing I wanted to do was put this moment on pause, but I did have one or two clear thoughts left in my head amid the haze of desire. “I need to get—” I started.

  She paused, leaning over me. Her lips brushed my skin as she spoke. “I’m on the pill. I’m clean. I’ve never— I’ve never trusted anyone enough to go without. But if you trust me—”

  My heart swelled. “I do,” I said, my voice coming out in a rasp. “I do.”

  Her breath trembled as she exhaled, as if she’d been afraid of my answer. Before she had any reason to doubt it, I flipped us over on the couch, bracing myself above her. She grasped the waist of my boxers, and with a few quick jerks that last barrier between us was gone.

  I kissed her as tenderly as the lust singing through my veins would allow as I dipped my fingers between her legs. She was wet—so fucking wet—and her hips arched the second I grazed her clit. Another whimper slipped out of her. “Nick. Please.”

  Oh, hell. I aligned the head of my cock with her slickness and plunged inside in one smooth movement. She cried out, the sound full of the same bliss I was feeling. She was tight and hot around me, her hips rising to meet each thrust, and now there was nothing left in my head but pleasure.

  She hooked her ankles behind my back, and I slid even deeper inside her. A gasp broke from her lips as I must have found that perfect spot. I bucked faster with her, falling headlong toward my release but holding onto just enough control to wait until I could bring her with me.

  She gripped the back of my head, my shoulder, my arm, clinging to me as she rose to meet me as if she could pull me deeper still. Her eyelids fluttered. Then with a shudder she clenched around my cock, so sharp and fast it sent me tumbling right over the edge after her. My balls clenched as pleasure rushed through my body.

  I rocked to a stop over her and bent my sweat-damp forehead to hers, reveling in the last tremors of her orgasm. She yanked my mouth to hers for another kiss, just as searingly hot as the ones before. And I knew then, even more than I had before, that there was no way I was leaving this woman behind. Not for good. If I had my way, not at all.

  16

  Carina

  My nerves were still tingling in a way too enjoyable way when Nick eased his weight over so he could cuddle me against him on the couch. With his solid arm around my waist and his warm breath tickling the hairs on the back of my neck, I could have just floated there in the aftermath of ecstasy for ages. My gaze drifted over the room and settled on the full travel-sized backpack on the kitchen island. Less blissful thoughts trickled in.

  What happened now? Was Nick still going to leave the city? What was I going to do to get out from under Alpha Project’s thumb?

  In the last two weeks, I’d spent a lot of time with the man I was pressed up against now, but I still didn’t know him all that well. And I didn’t know his family at all. But in that hasty moment of longing and relief, I’d completely thrown my lot in with him.

  Well, the knowing him part I could do something about right now. I traced my fingers over his knuckles. “So what does it feel like—your talent? Can you, like, decide what information you want to get?”

  Nick chuckled. “I wish it were that simple. No, I just open my mind and impressions flow in. Usually ones involving strong emotions. It can take a while for me to figure out how to return something I’ve found.”

  “What all did you get from me?”

  He shifted his arm and nuzzled my hair. “Nothing too private, I don’t think. Little glimpses of your childhood—kind of a plain apartment? A yard with a big wall around it? A few snippets from conversations with people I assume are your Alpha Project contacts here—some guy with really white hair?”

  “Frederick,” I said. My gut knotted, imagining all the things Nick might have overheard. All the ways I might have talked about him—the Keane brother I’d been tracking, the man hadn’t known was Nick.

  I must have tensed, because Nick kissed my shoulder reassuringly. “There was nothing that made me think less of you,” he said. “We wouldn’t be here now if there had been.”

  “It’s just… strange,” I said. But maybe not any stranger than the way I’d spied on his past. “Just to be clear, you don’t really have any friend named Alex, right?”

  “Not a one. I don’t have a whole lot of friends in general. It’s hard, you know, when the only people you can really be yourself around are family. You never know who might say the wrong thing in the wrong place or company, because they don’t understand the stakes.”

  “Yeah.” I hugged his arm against me. That was the life Langdon and the rest of Alpha Project’s people had forced on Nick. One where he could never totally trust anyone. Never really settle down. Where me walking into his life could upend everything in just a couple weeks.

  “Do you think you still have to leave?” I asked. “You shouldn’t have to give up everything you have here because of me.”

  “I guess that depends on whether you can explain away all the time you’ve spent with me and why you haven’t found any other leads,” Nick said. “It might still be safer for me to get out of the city, at least temporarily.” He paused. “Do they have other talented people looking for us, people like you?”

  I shook my head. “Not really. I’m the oldest one that I know of. They only felt I had enough experience in the field to take on a mission like this in the last year. Or maybe the ‘experience’ was them waiting to be sure I wasn’t going to try to give them the slip after all.” My mouth twisted.

  “There’s one guy close to my age back at the Alpha Project compound,” I went on, “but his talent is that sometimes he sees bits of the future in dreams… Not something he needs to be on location for, not that he’s seen anything useful that I know of so far. It’s pretty random, like whether it’s going to rain in Chicago tomorrow.”

  “Are there many younger?” Nick asked.

  I nodded. “A few teenagers, and I think some younger kids, but they mostly stay with their foster families…” A chill curdled in my stomach. “Where do you think we all came from?”

  “I don’t know,” Nick said. “Usually talents don’t emerge until people are older than you were taken in… Mine kicked in around ten years old. I’m not sure how they’d have known you’d have one. Maybe they’ve brought in some adult subjects who had kids young enough that they could ‘adopt’ you out?”

  My heartbeat kicked up a notch. “Then my parents might still be alive. One of them, at least.”

  “I think there’s a decent chance,” Nick said. “I actually—” He hesitated, the muscles in his arm tightening, and I realized he was debating whether to say whatever he’d been going to. Debating whether he could trust me that far too.

  No matter what he said, he wasn’t completely sure I couldn’t be a threat.

  “My younger brother is really good with computers,” he said after another beat. “I sent him your picture so he could run it through facial recognition
software, trying to find people who might be a genetic match, and also your fork from the restaurant the other day, to look for a DNA link.”

  I flinched. “You what?” I said, sitting up. “You sent off all that stuff without even telling me?”

  Nick looked back at me mildly, maybe even a little puzzled. “Alpha Project got DNA off that necklace to track me. Wouldn’t you have tried to get mine if you’d suspected me sooner? I only wanted to use it to help you find your parents.”

  He was right, but a jab ran through my stomach anyway. “They’re my parents. You shouldn’t— Oh, I don’t know.” I shoved my hands back through the tight curls of my hair.

  “I’m sorry.” Nick sat up too, slinging a tentative arm around my back. “It was definitely an invasion of privacy. If I’d thought I could have asked you then without showing my hand too much, I would have. But I didn’t know how things would go… I thought I might need proof of what had really happened to your parents before you’d listen to me at all. I’m still sorry, though.”

  “It makes sense,” I said. “I do want to know.” I just wished it had happened another way. But at the same time, I was desperately curious. “Has he found anything on them yet?”

  “He’s still working on it,” Nick said. “I’ll tell you as soon as I hear anything, I can promise that. Are you okay?”

  “Yeah.” I brought my hands back to my lap. I still felt off-balance, and having Nick next to me, his bare leg flush against mine, the taste of his skin lingering on my lips… That was not helping me think clearly.

  I leaned into him for a moment, drinking in his citrusy smell and kissing the corner of his jaw. “I think I need a little space to figure out how I’m going to handle this. And to just process everything. You don’t have to worry that I’ll spill anything to them, all right? This has all happened so fast.”

  “I know.” He turned and caught my mouth with a long, lingering kiss that made me question whether I really needed to leave right this second. But at the same time, it reminded me exactly why I needed some time to myself to get my head on straight. I touched his cheek, kissed him again quickly, and got up to grab my panties off the floor.

  Nick pulled on his jeans and followed me to the door. He squeezed my hand before I stepped out. The second the door closed between us, an ache swelled in my chest as if I’d said good-bye to him forever.

  Which was ridiculous. I was more sure of seeing him again after today than any other time we’d gotten together.

  Nick’s apartment was quite a hike from mine, but I walked for several blocks, ignoring the taxis that cruised by. People ambled fast, totally oblivious to the turmoil of my thoughts. Parents and kids. Happy couples, hand in hand. I watched one of them pass with a deeper ache in my heart.

  Could that be me and Nick someday? Could we hope to have any kind of future?

  I was going to have to dig myself out of my position with Alpha Project first. He’d said he’d help me, but what could he do, really? It was going to be up to me.

  Langdon and Frederick and the others—they wanted me to think I was a willing part of this mission. They wanted me to believe they saw me as a person, not a tool. How far would they go if I pushed back? Maybe I could simply say that I’d met this Alex guy and it’d been a dead end, and I was tired of the hunt. I wanted to do a little traveling on my own for a while as I figured out my next steps. Would they give me that space? I’d managed to disappear to Paris for a few hours.

  After a while, my legs got tired, and I hadn’t thought myself any farther into a plan I felt sure of. Evening had fallen, the shadows stretching long across the street. I let a taxi carry me the rest of the way home. As I pushed open the door, my back stiffened. I half expected Langdon to be waiting again like he had been this afternoon.

  The apartment was empty. Just the modern-styled furniture, the plain white dishes and stainless steel appliances in the kitchen, the heavy drapes over the main window… All the furnishings my handlers had picked out for me. Other than some of the clothes in the bedroom and a couple of trinkets I’d picked up, nothing even here was really mine, was it? It was all just more evidence of their complete control over my life.

  My stomach balled. Even if I never saw Nick again, I had to get out of this.

  My phone rang. My nerves jumped, with hope that it was Nick and then trepidation when I saw Langdon’s number on the screen.

  “Hi?” I said. Why was he getting in touch again after our recent chat? He hadn’t seemed suspicious then.

  “Carina,” Langdon said without preamble. “I’ve given the matter some thought since we spoke earlier today, and I believe it’s time for us to extract you from the mission.”

  For a second, I couldn’t believe my ears. “What?”

  “You’ve gotten very wrapped up in the details of the case,” Langdon said, whatever that meant. “I think you might need a break just to make sure you’re using your best judgment. It’s not a criticism. Everyone in the field goes through times like this. I’ll send you back to Arizona and you can catch up with Todd.”

  Todd. Fucking Todd. Actually, that was probably what Langdon hoped I’d do. I grimaced at the phone. But this development did play into the plan I’d been considering. “If that’s what you think is best,” I said. “But I don’t want to go home. Can I at least stay abroad for a little while? Take in the sights I haven’t had a chance to? Maybe it’d be good for me to find a proper job for a little while.”

  I could tell Langdon was shaking his head. “I think it’s best for you to be on familiar ground for now, with people you know. I’m arranging plane tickets for you right now.”

  A jolt of panic shot through me. “Wait,” I said. “Don’t I get some say in this?”

  “Of course you do,” he said smoothly. “Take a week to recuperate from the stresses of the field back home, and then we can talk about it.”

  Sure we would. As soon as I was back behind the compound’s wall, what were the chances he’d let me step outside it ever again?

  I swallowed hard. “I’m twenty-three. An adult. Shouldn’t I get to decide some of this?”

  “Carina.” Langdon’s voice turned almost gentle. “You’re still young and inexperienced. Sometimes you need to let your elders make a few decisions for you.”

  A few? I restrained the urge to laugh. “And what if I just don’t go along with it?” I blurted out.

  Langdon was silent for a moment. A moment that was long enough for regret to sweep over me. That’d been the wrong thing to say.

  “Let’s hope we don’t have to get into that,” he said. “A car will come around to pick you up around noon tomorrow. Make sure you’re packed on time.”

  17

  Nick

  “She could be playing a long game,” Dad said through the phone. “Waiting for you to reveal more about the family so they can round us all up.”

  I sighed and leaned my elbows on my desk. We’d been going around in circles for the better part of half an hour. “Then why would she have told me that she found out what city you and Mom are in? If she hadn’t mentioned that, you’d still be there. You didn’t see her, Dad. Her whole life has been cracked down the middle. She’s not that amazing an actress—I watched her try to act with me for most of the time we were together, remember?”

  “They won her over once—”

  “When she was a kid. When she couldn’t have known any better. Come on.” I paused before letting out the one jab I knew was sure to hit the mark. “Knowing what I did about you, all the things you hadn’t told us, maybe I shouldn’t have trusted you. But the impressions I get aren’t just dry facts. I sense feelings, I sense context. And one thing I’ve learned in almost twenty years of it is that most people are good if you give them the chance to be. Carina’s good. I can tell.”

  Dad was silent. There was a rustle, and Mom took over. “We’re just worried about you, Nick,” she said. “About all of you. They got so close to Jeremy…”

  “But he’s fine,
and we’ll figure this out too. You have to think about the risk Carina’s taking too. She had a safe, comfortable life, and she’s ready to throw that away, even though they could stick her in the lab if they find out.”

  “You’re right. I know that. Just keep checking in so we know all’s well, okay?”

  “Of course.”

  Dad came back on. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to push too hard. It’s been a long day.”

  They’d fled Croatia as soon as they’d gotten my message and been on the road several hours. They were holed up now in a town not far from Prague, deciding what steps to take next. It was midnight for me now—later for them.

  “I get it,” I said. “Maybe I shouldn’t have said what I did.”

  “No. It was fair.” He let out a shaky breath. “I suppose I have to get used to the fact that I’ve raised five confident adults who aren’t afraid to call me on my bullshit. I’m actually glad about that.”

  It was a relief to at least end the conversation on a softer note. I shuffled into the bathroom to brush my teeth, looking forward to finally flopping into bed, when my other phone, the public one, dinged with an incoming text.

  My heart skipped a beat. It was Carina, but the brief text didn’t make a whole lot of sense. Hey. Are you up? Can you meet me at the park?

  The park? We hadn’t been to any parks together. What was she talking about? I started typing out the question and caught myself.

  Carina wasn’t normally vague, not unless she was trying to talk around something she couldn’t reveal. She was trying to hide something from someone. Did she suspect the Alpha Project people were tracking her phone use?

  They probably were. That was exactly what they’d have done. Thank God the only times we’d talked about anything close to the truth it’d been in person.

  Park… Park… What park could she be talking about that she’d assume I’d think of?