by Angel Payne
Just before he grits his teeth and bites out, “Get off me, baby. Right now.”
My eyes sting worse. I blink hard. “Excuse the hell out of—”
“Goddamnit, Emma!” he cuts in. “There’s no time. I can’t block her totally out for much longer.”
“Shit.” The reiteration comes with a new deluge of tears. I swing my head in wide but useless back-and-forths. “No. No. No!”
“Emmalina.” Though he’s back to channeling his inner wolf, the effort clearly costs him in resilience. “We don’t have time, baby. Listen to me.” When I pull back a little, he looks like I’ve given him water in the desert…and I hate it. My body has been hardwired by the universe to mesh with his, but his grip on my thighs conveys a defined message. He’s holding back. “Damn it, Velvet. Can’t you see? This is what she wants me to do. Why she chose now, when you and I were alone, to wake me back up.”
He could have told me Faline decided to blow up the rest of LA and gutted me less. Everything he’s said is a perfect string back to what Wade and Fershan have already posited…and though I confront that reality in the torment of his eyes, I state it aloud anyway. “Because Kane did put something into you.” As soon as the harsh angles of his face confirm that, I fight the yearning to bury my fist in one of the bedside monitors. “Something awful,” I rasp. “Her…her evil. Oh, God. It is a damn virus…and she woke you up, commanding you to fuck me…so you’d give me the electric flu as well.”
The grim validation on his face becomes the horrific motivation for me to slide all the way free from him. The second we’re apart, his cock springs up like an ignited flare, blue veins straining at the flesh, stretching him to the point that the shaft visibly jerks, his lips part on a rough groan, and thick drops of his stunning, glowing essence gush out of the slit at his erect tip.
“Holy…shit.” I facepalm myself, wishing I could toss off the motion as melodrama…but this situation is really that eye-poppingly insane. “H-How could you…did you…hold back?” His stunning cock is still dripping with those heavy, glistening drops—none of which are inside me.
“With me, all the code gives her is control,” he utters back through clenched teeth. “But if it gets inside you—”
“I’m dead.” I state it because I have to. Because I have no choice but to accept it. We were ready to screw each other like a couple of Grand Theft Auto horndogs, but Reece fought off Faline’s sadistic control and his raging libido, not spilling even one cell of himself inside me.
Unbelievable.
This man, identified for so many years because of the prowess of his penis, just saved my life because of his abstinence.
“Well, damn.” I pull in a shaky breath. Let it out on a wobbly sigh. “You do love me.” To depths that astound and move me as never before.
“Yeah, little Bunny.” His gaze glitters with matching intensity. “I do.” While he skates his touch up my arm, his tone descends into a concentrated growl. “And you love me too.”
“Yeah, you big ox.” I declare it through lingering tears. “I really do.”
“Good.” He curls his fingertips around the back of my elbow. “That’s…really good.”
My heartbeat clutches…and not in a mushy I’m-sixteen-again way. “Why?” I draw it out with open suspicion, not encouraged when he sets his mouth into a determined line.
“Because I’m going to ask you to prove it.”
“How?”
“No,” he amends. “I’m going to order you to.”
“How?”
He raises his hold and grips my upper arm now. “I can’t fight her off much longer, Emma. And when she gets back into my head, she can’t have access to my free will.” He pauses as if knowing I need a second to process that. To envision what would happen to this place, and possibly all of us, if Faline Garand were able to control Reece like her personal drone. “She can’t get even one crack of access to my consciousness,” he finally utters. “Do you understand?”
I lift my head, giving him an unobstructed view of the pulse pounding at the base of my throat. “I’m… I’m not sure.”
He nods toward a glass-fronted case on top of a nearby counter. “In there. Rear right side. You’ll find some vials of Pentobarbital. I’ll walk you through how to use them.”
“Annnnnd we’re throwing a flag on this play, stud.” Somehow I get it out past my lurching stomach. “You… You want me to do what?”
“Emma. Baby.” He twists his fingers around the ball of my shoulder now. “If there were time to let you peruse YouTube on this, I would, but—”
“Don’t need the video. I get it.” Except that the closest experience I’ve had to this was jabbing a classmate in high school with an epi pen after she rolled onto a bee in PE. She was fine; I nearly passed out. And more recently, having to hold Reece’s hand, while he was unconscious, while Wade drew his blood…
Wade.
Oh, thank God. Wade.
“Just let me… I’ll get Wade or Fersh—”
“No time,” Reece snarls before falling all the way back down, as if I’ve thrown over one of the machines onto his chest. Only I’m nowhere near him now. I’m watching, helpless and wide-eyed, though he no longer sees me. With his body going stiff and his pupils disappearing into his eyelids, he’s got a great start for an impressive horror movie scene—except that this is all hideously real. He’s actually subjecting himself to some strange seizure in the name of fighting off Faline’s mental invasion—and all I can do is sit here and think about bees.
“Shit!”
But not anymore.
“Shit, shit, shit, shit!”
I bound off the table and sprint toward the medications cabinet. The second I haul it open, there’s a seismic rattle behind me. Reece is jerking from head to toe now, going for the ideal punk-rock-video audition.
Shit, shit, shit, shit!
“Hang on, baby.” It’s intelligible past my tears, but I’m not so lucky with my vision. Everything looks like a bad soap opera flashback, watery and confused, as I try reading the tiny labels on the vials inside the cabinet. “Hang on! I’m getting it, okay? I’m…I’m getting—”
“What the hell?” Suddenly, thank God, Wade bursts back in. “Emma? What the hell is going on?”
“Did he wake up?” Fershan enters right behind, rushing toward the bed as Reece goes into worse convulsions. “His readings jumped and then dipped, and now they are all over the place…”
“She woke him up.” I refuse to give Faline any more verbal credit than that. “And then he fought her back, but—”
“He is weakening.” Fershan dips an efficient nod. Though I’ve seen the exact same motion from him so many times before, it’s accompanied by a layer of badass that earns a new river of my respect. I only wish it weren’t because of these circumstances, especially when his lips compress as he looks over Reece’s spasming form. “He is weakening fast,” he stresses. “So we must save him even faster.”
Badass or not, I step into the gap with shoulders squared. “But Reece told me—”
“I am fairly certain of what he told you.” Fersh pivots like a captain on the bridge of his own battleship but tempers the vibe with enough of the aligned-chakras Fersh that I’m double-taking again. Not that he’s even noticing. “Grab the Pentobarbital,” he charges to Wade. “Stat.”
The guys work fast, Fershan slamming an air mask over Reece’s face as Wade sets up to push the coma-inducing medicine into Reece’s IV tube. But while they’re moving like a well-oiled triage team straight out of Grey Sloan Memorial, I stand here with my proverbial girl dick in one hand though manage to throw a hand towel across Reece’s crotch. The larger loincloth has gone missing, so I’m thanking God his erection has finally waned.
But so have all his violent jerks.
And the tension in his muscles.
And the energy of his presence.
Waned. But not gone.
I clutch his hand and hold it tight. Tighter.
/> When Wade looks up again, it’s to jog his head toward the juncture of our hands. “Good,” he barks, ginger curls falling into his eyes. “That’s really good, Emma. You keep doing exactly that, okay?”
I compress my lips, hoping it helps to rein back the tears. “Uh…okay.”
“He is right.” Fershan ticks his head in a matching nod of firm purpose. “You have the most important job right now, Emma,” he murmurs. “Before the darkness takes him completely, remind him of the light he must return for.”
“The light we’ll bring him back to.” Wade circles and faces me in full. His posture is full of purpose, and his gaze gleams with a strength it’s never had before. “And damn it, Em, we will bring him back.”
“Without the wicked witch and her ding dongs.”
Even when Wade scrubs a hand along his jaw and mutters, “Dude, no more Judy Garland bingeing for you,” I can’t summon even a smile. Even thinking of Faline without her damn “ding dongs” isn’t pulling down the fuzzy feels for me right now.
Not as Reece’s hand goes as lax as a rag doll’s in my grip.
Not as his body goes so still and his breaths turn so shallow, I splay a hand across his chest, desperately feeling for his heartbeat.
Not as the last tiny ember of our connection fades from my spirit…leaving me in a vast darkness of my own.
A night in which I’m locked and will continue to be trapped. Until we figure out a way to break Reece out of Faline’s wavelength that won’t involve giving him a lobotomy or keeping him in a coma for weeks—or even months.
But right now, this is all we can do.
To keep him locked away from Faline, he has to stay locked away from us as well.
“But not forever.”
I whisper to Reece—and to myself—the acute vow of my heart. The organ is already threatening to explode out of my chest, just for the chance to burrow into his and stay nestled there forever. Those desperate beats take up the slack for the sparse thumps of his. I flatten my hand across his sternum, grateful for every soft tap I get in return. Cherishing every sign of life his body will give me despite the shroud of midnight in which we’ve trapped it.
“Hang on, my bold, brave Zeus. We’ll figure this out, and you’ll be back to slinging lightning at the world in no time. I promise you, okay?” I pause and wait, but for what, I don’t know. His stillness should reassure me, but it doesn’t. There’s just…nothing for me to hold on to. Not a single rasp. Not the barest sigh. Not even a hint of his smoke and cinnamon in my nostrils.
Which only leaves one last window.
Faith.
The blindest, hardest, most desperate version of the stuff.
He’s still in there. He’s still listening. You know he is. You know it.
Now, you have to believe it.
“I do.” I declare it on a thread of breath, pouring all my strength into the clasp of my fingers around his. “I do believe, baby. In you. In the you that’s still inside me. I believe.”
“Baby girl.” It’s not exactly the response I was yearning for, but Lydia’s murmur is still a welcome addition to the air. She doesn’t add to it until she’s done spreading out the blanket she’s brought, the velour throw from our bed upstairs, helping me cover Reece from the waist down. “You look like the walking dead, sweetie.”
“Thanks,” I deadpan. “Though technically, wouldn’t that be the standing dead?”
“Doesn’t matter.” She cups my shoulders from behind. “You need rest, and you need it now.”
“Then bring me one of the rockers from the living room.”
“I mean sleep rest. As in, laying your head on a pillow, in a bed.”
“Then bring a bed in here.”
“I’ve brought myself in here.” She flashes her phone into my line of vision. “And I know where to get you if anything beeps or buzzes strangely. Now go. Please. At least for an hour or two.”
“Not happening, ’Dia.”
“Fine,” she says breezily. “Then I guess I’ll have to use this other handy speed-dial button. Sawyer’s always so ready to help me out whenever I jingle…”
I spin and reach for her phone—but as the wench has made clear, I really am past the point of exhaustion. All too easily, she swings away, flashing a catty smirk along with the landing page displaying Sawyer’s picture and number.
“You’re such a bitch.”
“Why yes, darling. Yes, I am.”
With a seething sneer, I pivot toward the door that leads to the driveway. “I’m setting my alarm for one hour from now.”
She jerks a golden eyebrow. “Make it two and you can have my extra-frosting cupcake.” In response to the questioning quirk of mine, she clarifies. “Apparently Joany stress-bakes.”
I school my features against exposing too much of my open drool. Beyond the sandwich I forced down sometime yesterday afternoon, I haven’t had anything to eat in the last twenty-four hours. “Ninety minutes.” I attempt to bargain.
“That starts when your head hits the pillow,” ’Dia counters.
“And I still get the whole cupcake?”
“After you wake up.”
I roll my eyes, realizing she’s probably already sampled the frosting in globby spoonfuls by now, though calling her out will do nothing for this negotiation. Finally, I capitulate. “Fine.”
My sister grins. “Sweet.” Then wiggles the tips of her fingers. “Rest well.”
“Resting is part of the bargain, sister. But I didn’t promise anything else.”
She raises both hands as if I’ve drawn a pistol on her. “Fair enough.”
Chapter Two
Emma
The second I reenter the house and turn toward the stairs up to the master bedroom, I can’t push my foot past the bottom step. I can’t think about going back to the bedroom—our bedroom—as if this is just another stressful day in the adventures of Bolt and his lady and taking a nap will prepare me for facing the rest of it better. It’s too great a pretense to ask, no matter how deeply my exhaustion is embedded into my bones.
Prowling through the house likely won’t count as a worthier effort, but after issuing a silent apology to Lydia and saying a wistful goodbye to the cupcake on the kitchen counter with its flawless frosting rose, I’m off for my first lap of my stress-induced journey.
I make fast work of carousing through the kitchen, the dining room, and the den. I stop halfway down the glass-lined hall that leads to the gym and the downstairs office.
Where just a few hours ago, I’d found Sawyer crouched over a fallen, depleted Reece.
Where I’d dropped to his side too and watched in helpless dread as Faline ripped his mind away from me. As she’s just tried to do again, bringing on a hundred times that agony.
Because she’s that much closer to succeeding?
No. No.
I wrap my arms around my middle so the resolve has to stay locked inside, despite the chaos of my heartbeat, the tumult of my nerves, and the churn of my belly. But there’s no wiggle room on this. I will drive everyone on this team to the point of no return if I have to—starting with the girl reflected back at me from the window, with her exhaustion-hollowed eyes—until we find a way to snatch back Faline’s new play toy.
The bitch has picked the wrong freaking shiny this time.
I drop my hands and straighten my shoulders as the resolve fortifies me, all but trumpeting through me—until that victory parade is roadblocked by another voice from inside.
Oh, yeah? Says you and what army, honey?
Because in the end, without the “Bolt” part, “Team Bolt” is just three tech geeks and a couple of girls from Newport Beach, though there’s a chance the surf god and Deneuve’s double might decide to stick around if Joany keeps plying them with cupcakes. But even killer cupcakes will only take us so far. While each of us understands a different part of Reece’s drive, none of us has the entire scope of it the way he does. As close as I am to the man, I have to accept that there�
�ll still be lots of nights on the figurative prairie porch, wringing my hands and staring out at dirt and twigs. Though at least now, that last part is literal.
“Emmalina?” The quiet query hits the air like a whip, making me behave the same way. I snap around though order myself to chill out when confronting a familiar pair of catlike eyes, perfectly made up in shades of blue and gray, perfectly matching her mottled skull. “Are you all right?”
I chuff softly, not sure how to answer. Well played, fate. I’ve mentally parked myself on the porch, only to get an offer of companionship by Angelique La Salle, whom I watched Reece walk away with the first time I was here, nearly a day ago. Practically a lifetime ago…
In that pivotal moment, I’d been so viciously tempted to give the woman some very choice words and an oh-so-eloquent finger flip. I fight the same provocation now, only the conflict stings a lot worse and burns a lot deeper.
But damn it, Angelique’s stare is brimming with true sincerity. She even attempts a little smile. What if fate wants me to see some kind of lesson here, despite its timing needing some serious help?
So I turn a little, leaning against the dark-wood wall comprising the other side of the hall, and mutter, “No. Not really.”
Angelique steps a little closer but doesn’t push for a therapy session dump. It’s pretty nice—a rare quality, actually. Sometimes, though rarely, I’ve been capable of it myself. Being given the double-X chromosome somehow includes the universe’s bonus download of the talking-about-it-will-help chip. But sometimes, instant words don’t help. Sometimes it’s nice to have a friend who’s willing to wait through the silence until they do.
“Reece wants to go Japanese Zen garden out here.” I nod toward the atrium on the other side of the windows. “Bonsai trees, meditation sand, one of those rocking bamboo fountains…” I look over as Angie hums with understanding. “But I’ve been arguing for something more tropical. Lush bushes and palms, maybe even some Tiki gods…” I’m on the brink of laughing about how I’d even threatened pink flamingoes to Reece, but the sentiment succumbs fast to a watery wince. “Seemed like such a good idea to put in an atrium when my mom first suggested it. But now…” I shake my head. “It’s one of the few things the two of us can’t agree on.” I push off the wall and swallow hard, battling the urge to drive my whole fist through the glass. “I’d let him have it all now, Angelique. The sand and the bonsai and the fountain and even some damn koi fish, if only…”
