by Pam Godwin
Jesse leaned against the locked door, watching me in his usual silent way. Roark drummed fingers on the scabbard at his hip, wearing a brooding expression that slitted his usually smiling eyes. And Michio, braced over the sink on stiff arms, looked as though he were seconds from ripping the porcelain from the wall. The large bathroom felt too small for all the unspoken things bouncing between the four of us.
I shattered the silence with an easy question. “How did you find the arm sheathes?”
Roark shot a weary glance at Michio’s back. “Darwin found them on the side of the road in Missouri. His nose scented them out the window of the truck.”
“That dog will never cease to amaze me.” I shook my head, smiling. “Thank you for bringing them back to me.”
“We have a rake of questions, love.” Roark shrugged out of his trench coat and dropped it with his scabbard on the floor. Then he reached over his head and gripped the back of his t-shirt, yanking it off. “I know you’re tired, so we’ll talk while we clean up. Just give us the highlights, starting with why the feck Doc took ye from us.”
Anger clipped the edges of his brogue. Evidently, the hug he’d given Michio an hour ago wasn’t one of forgiveness. And the second I removed the scraps of cotton from my body, his temper would explode, likely in fists raining down on Michio’s face.
I fingered the scarf around my neck, stalling. “Aiman knew Michio had the ability to track me. He used mind control to send him to my house— Wait.” I stared at Michio’s back. “I saw Aiman in a dream. In my home. If he was trying to lure me there, why did he need you to track me?”
Michio looked up and met my eyes in the mirror, his hands tightening around the sink. “I don’t think he knew about the dream. I didn’t know about it. We passed through Missouri on our way here from the mountains, stopping only so he could destroy the home you might want to return to.”
That was fucked up. Worse was imagining Michio watching Aiman burn my house while locked in his body, unable to stop it from happening.
“Hold on, for feck’s sake.” Roark’s accent thickened with impatience. “I’m still stuck on mind control.”
I opened my mouth to explain, but Michio cut me off.
“I’ll tell them.” He pivoted to face me, his body straight and stiff. “Take off your clothes, Evie.”
The hardness in his voice and the bore of his gaze brooked no room for argument. He could explain the mechanics of Aiman’s control better than I could, but I refused to remove a stitch of clothing without some promises.
Glancing at each man, I folded my arms over my chest. “No fighting. No weapons. No violence of any kind until everyone has heard everything. Promise me.”
I got three terse nods, but the tension in the room condensed, pressing against my skin. Their breaths lengthened, and their bodies flexed as they guardedly watched each other and me.
Two long steps carried Michio past me. He reached toward the ceiling and turned the valves to activate the shower head. It was the same modified set up as the other bathroom, just an attachment added to an overhead pipe in the middle of the large space and a drain in the tiled floor beneath it.
He moved away from the spray of the water and stared at me with an unwavering expression, waiting for me to expose the bite and bruises.
As I slowly unwrapped the rags, Roark removed his boots and pants. My insides clenched at the sight of his imposing nudity, my focus momentarily distracted by his cock, so full and heavy, hanging against his thigh and reminding me I hadn’t had an orgasm in over a month.
I caught him gazing at my body, not directly, but from beneath his blond lashes as he kicked his clothes away from the water.
Jesse stepped away from the wall, his stark glare locked on my yellow-spotted ribs. “The fuck?”
“I did that.” Michio glared at the bruises, his eyes like blood-stained doors into the dark dungeon of his thoughts. “I drugged her. Locked her in a cage for two weeks in the back of a truck. Made her defecate in a bucket. Froze her through the Colorado Mountains without so much as a blanket to keep her warm.”
The collected hike in breaths eroded away any calm that was left in the room. It felt as though someone had sprayed a can of bloodthirsty testosterone in the air.
“What’s he talking about, Evie?” Jesse’s voice was stone grinding on stone, his stance deadly still.
Roark paced behind Jesse, hands clenching at his sides, glaring at Michio.
Frustration bit at my insides. “Michio, don’t—”
“They need to know!” His voice was hoarse and thick with guilt, his eyes drilling into Jesse and Roark as if begging them to hurt him. “I punched her every time she tried to escape.”
Jesse flew at Michio, his face burning with rage, his khukuri suddenly appearing beneath Michio’s jaw.
“Jesse, no!” I didn’t know where the knife had come from. Under his invisible jacket? Beneath his tight leather pants? Out of his ass? Telekinesis? Nothing surprised me anymore.
Roark was right behind him, his fist rearing back to swing. Fuck! I grabbed his waist, my stomach spinning as I twisted around him.
“You promised.” I glared at the back of Jesse’s head and pushed against the hard press of Roark’s heaving chest, shouting at both of them, “He wants you to punish him because he’s hurting, but none of this was his fault.”
Michio lifted his chin, moisture sheening his eyes as he leaned into the lethal edge of the knife.
I pushed harder against the corded muscles of Roark’s torso. “Tell them, Michio!”
With my hands pressed against Roark’s naked body, I struggled to hold him back. I leaned harder, with my shoulder then all of my weight. I wished I hadn’t removed my clothes and revealed the bruises. I should’ve explained the marks first instead of relying on Michio to defend himself.
A few feet away, Jesse and Michio were still dressed, locked in a lethal embrace with Jesse’s knife against Michio’s throat. Jesse glared at Michio, his eyes burning, while Michio stared back, silently begging him to sink the blade.
“Jesse, I know you won’t hurt him. You saw him save my life up there.” I knew he was reacting without thinking, and Michio was giving him an easy target. “Michio, tell them what actually happened or I will.”
Jesse jerked the dagger away but didn’t back up.
After a heavy swallow, Michio unraveled Aiman’s plans, the mind control used on him and the spiders, and how my blood in the women worked as a vaccine against the venom. He spoke in anguished tones, each word more hollow than the last.
Jesse and Roark backed up, staring in horrified disbelief.
“You understand now?” I waved a hand over my bruises. “Aiman used Michio’s body to hurt both of us.”
Jesse and Michio remained outside of the spray of the shower head, and Roark pulled me beneath it.
As the warm water enveloped us, he wrapped me in his arms. “Shh. It's over. It's all over. He can't hurt you anymore.” He lifted his eyes to Michio. “Or you.”
“Fuck.” Jesse dropped the khukuri on the duffel bag, his eyes staying with Michio as his anger slipped behind the furrowed grooves in his face. “That’s fucking…I don’t know what it is. How did you break your mind free to kill him?”
Roark’s fingers traced the mark on my neck. I suspected he wanted to ask about it. Maybe he was already figuring it out, but he remained quiet as he shifted his attention to Michio.
“Aiman controlled my voluntary movements and knew all of my thoughts.” Resentment seeped through Michio’s voice. “So I shut off my mind.”
“What do you mean you shut it off?” I held my head out of the water as Roark rubbed shampoo into my hair. “Are you talking about meditation?”
I recalled all the times I’d seen Michio sitting cross-legged on the floor in Malta, with the backs of his hands on bent knees, ankles on opposing thighs, eyes closed. A pose used in Buddhist meditation.
“Yes. I quieted my thoughts and focused on my breaths in self-forgetful concent
ration. In doing so, I surrendered my body to physiological response.”
Jesse tread a path through the room, his leather pants straining against the flex of his thighs. Anxiety was better than anger in this case, but it didn’t make his pacing any calmer. “That’s fight-or-flight reaction, right?”
Michio nodded, staring down at his empty hands. “I didn’t know if it would work, but I trusted my unconscious reflexes when it came to Evie.”
I rinsed the shampoo from my hair, my mind spinning with questions. “The rope…I don’t understand. How did you tie it so diligently without thinking about how I would fall with it?”
His slack expression and sad eyes tightened my throat as he said, “I’d been in a state of meditation for two weeks. When Aiman commanded me to restrain you and bring you to the surface, I let my instincts guide the intricacies of the knots.”
God, he’d been through so much, and my heart thumped with the need to protect him from the emotional aftermath.
The wounds on his arms and upper body were closed up and healing beneath all the blood. But his ribs jutted sharply around the stacks of muscles in his chest.
I left the warmth of the falling water and gripped his wrist, pulling him toward the shower head. Before he moved into the water, I reached down to remove his pants. It was such a familiar thing to do, yet I hesitated. Fucking bitch Elaine.
I looked up and asked with my eyes. Do I have permission to strip you? Is it okay to touch you here?
He glanced at my hand hovering over his groin, his dark brows furrowing. Then he nodded.
My fingers fumbled to loosen the belt and slide it from the loops of his pants, my voice soft. “Why are you so thin?”
“My stomach wouldn’t keep food down.” He stared at my body, his eyes roaming over my curves, but his gaze seemed to be lost to whatever nightmare Elaine had branded on his soul. “Another reflexive response Aiman couldn’t control.”
I left his pants hanging on his hips to circle my arms around his waist. The tight muscles of his back bunched beneath my palms as my fingers slid over his skin, holding him to me. He stood there like a steel beam in my arms yet he seemed so unsteady, leaning against me.
Finally, his hands lifted and eased up my spine, slowly, way too cautiously to satisfy my impatient need for the kind of touches he used to give me, but patience was exactly what he needed. I owed him that and so much more.
The scent of deodorant soap mixed with masculine musk reached my nose. I stood just at the edge of the water with Roark fully immersed behind me. He quickly scrubbed down his body then moved his lathered hands to my ass, taking extra time to massage and re-massage the bubbles into my skin.
When Roark’s breathing grew heavier, I knew he’d moved far past patient, his every stroke promising he’d fuck me into oblivion before the night was over.
With agonizing tenderness, Michio traced the edge of the marks on my neck as he told Jesse and Roark about Aiman’s intention to drain my power and kill me, skipping over how the prophecy had led to that decision.
He explained how the bite and consummation of my blood had ultimately broke the Drone’s hold on his mind. “I didn’t consciously try to bite you, Evie. I was operating on pure reflex, guided by my physiological response to fight.”
He assumed it was fight, but I suspected his body knew my blood was what it needed to overpower Aiman.
“I wanted you to bite me, and your body knew that. Thank fuck your instincts were stronger than Aiman’s control of your actions.”
We shared a look, a connection forged in hardship and love. Had he felt what I felt during that bite? The veracity in it? The way we’d conformed to our need to come together despite the odds against us? Had he felt my child reaching for him during the bite, drawing on his venom and absorbing his essence? I couldn’t ask without jumping into the prolific conversation of my pregnancy.
Jesse removed his shirt and toed off his boots. “You’re telling us the spiders don’t have control over their reflexes like you did? They’re programmed to mindlessly bite others? Then what?”
As Michio talked through the effects of the spider bite, Roark crouched behind me, his hands sliding the soap down my legs. My senses were heightened to his every touch, my skin shivering beneath the stroke of his fingers. He seemed single-mindedly committed to his task, his breaths attuned to mine, but I knew he was clinging to every word Michio said.
I looked for the shampoo to wash Michio’s hair, and the bottle appeared beside me, clutched in Jesse’s outstretched hand. He stood outside the splash of water, still wearing his pants. I reached past the bottle and cupped his jaw, relishing the scratch of his whiskers against my palm. I wanted to draw him to my mouth and suck the plump flesh of his bottom lip. I wanted to kiss along the line of his neck and lick the hollow of his throat. I wanted him twitching and groaning as I teased my mouth down his abs.
When I accepted the shampoo from him, he freed the button on his waistband. His pupils dilated as his gaze swept down my body and returned to my face.
Sweet pissing hell, he just removed his pants.
Michio watched us, not with jealousy but with something more…hesitant. Respect? Whatever it was softened his eyes and evened his breaths as he kicked off his boots. His pants and briefs followed.
It was torture-laced pleasure, standing there surrounded by three fiercely beautiful, naked men with all their sharp angles, warm skin, and visible strength. My fingers itched to touch. My mouth watered to lick as memories of their bodies moving around and in me sent a current of need through my core, gathering heat between my legs.
I reached toward Michio’s head and worked the shampoo into his hair. “You guys are killing me.”
Roark dragged soapy hands over my hips. “Goes both ways, love.”
Jesse’s eyes hooded and his hands clenched at his side. I glanced over my shoulder and found Roark’s cock thickening where it hung between his legs. But neither man moved to take it further, perhaps sensing that something was off about Michio.
The spray of a single shower head wasn’t big enough for the four of us. Jesse stood on the edge, completely unabashed with his nudity as he waited to rinse off.
He regarded me intently. “Are you still feeling overly-aroused?”
My clit throbbed at the gruffness in his voice. “Given the circumstances over the past month, I haven’t been. But now? I’m nursing a pretty big ache.”
Michio studied the other men for a long moment before looking down at me. No doubt he was thinking about pregnancy hormones and how Jesse and Roark had been on the receiving end of my libido.
I threaded soapy fingers through Michio’s hair, reacquainting myself with the thick texture. I tried not to stare at his hips, ridged with sharp edges and deep indentions, or the thin trail of dark hair that led from his abs to the black curls below, or his thick cock… I tried not to think about all the ways Elaine had violated him and hoped he would eventually let me replace bad memories with loving ones, one kiss at a time.
He gripped my waist, bringing our bodies closer, his thumbs stroking across my hips. “Are we done talking about the spiders?”
Jesse scratched the scruff of his jaw. “Just so I’m clear… When they bite, the venom programs the victim to bite and program other men and so on?”
“Until there’s no one left to bite,” I mumbled.
Behind me, Roark rose to his full height and tossed the bar of soap to Jesse, switching places with him. “Sounds like a race of mindless vampires with humans on the menu.”
“Not completely mindless.” Michio tilted his head back and rinsed. “They’re programmed to worship Allah, but with Aiman dead, they’re able to make decisions, think, and fight on their own, as long as the outcome serves Aiman’s purpose. They’ll pass on that programming to every man they bite. Women will be forced to breed with fertile men, then the spiders will bite those men, too, all in an effort to create Aiman’s chosen race. The present generation of women are immune to the p
rogramming, but their offspring are not.”
I met Michio’s eyes through the spray of the water. “Maybe the women will revolt?”
“Maybe. But they’re pregnant, which will restrict the risks they might be willing to take.” His eyes flicked to my stomach, a subtle glance, before returning to my face. “The babies in utero have already undergone Aiman’s programming. As new generations are conceived, the spiders will continue to bite the mothers, rendering them infertile while infecting the babies. Which means the newborns will be programmed like the others.”
The fucks were flying now, slipping under breaths as Jesse and Roark looked at one another.
Michio painted a future that put a hollowed-out species at the top of the food chain, one that worshiped a god without questioning their beliefs. A species void of freewill and inquisitiveness and everything that made humans human.
Since Michio had bitten me, would his venom program my baby? I didn’t think so since he was immune to the programming. But how would my daughter stop this from happening to others? Could she reverse the effects of the venom? Could she kill the creatures with a thought? Would her life be burdened with great suffering and difficulty as she fought to free mankind?
Jesse’s jaw hardened into stone. “When the prophecy referred to evolving creatures, it wasn’t talking about the aphids.”
“No.” Already knowing this didn’t stop the dread from festering in my gut.
Roark strode away, yanked a towel from the shelf, and wrapped it around his waist. “How do we find the women?”
“Follow the nymphs?” I trailed after him and grabbed a towel for myself, watching their expressions as I dried off.
“It’s a start.” Roark removed athletic shorts from the second bag and stepped into them, mumbling, “Fecking actual dirtball knoblicker doesn’t just die and leave us well alone. Oh no, he has to leave a mingin’ mess behind him.” He yanked the shorts to his waist and looked up. “When do we leave?”
Michio paused in his cleaning, and his eyes shot to mine, his thoughts as transparent as the water sluicing over his skin. As soon as Jesse and Roark learned I was pregnant, we wouldn’t be going anywhere. For safety reasons. And because the child in my womb held more answers than we’d find on the road.
