Theta Waves Box Set: The Complete Trilogy (Books 1-3) (Theta Waves Trilogy)

by Thea Atkinson

  He nodded. "I told you I forgive you for that."

  She chewed her lip. "I was a sadist. I hurt people. I hated you for what you did to me."

  "I know."

  "I've walked a lot of people through visions," she said. "I thought I was immune to the pain of shame and remembrance." She hung her head, staring into the mug.

  "That's not who you are now," he said. "Who you are now matters; who you are--"

  "Stop." She shook her head, pushing back into the cushions. She thought of Cathrin and her lovers, of the events that played out in intimate detail during Ezekiel's vision. "Don't say it," she said. "I tortured innocent people to death in that life. That's past cruel. That's evil. I can't be what you say I am, what Bridget thinks she sees."

  He shrugged, reaching for her waist and curling his arm around it, trying to pull her close, and giving up when she refused to move.

  "Well, whether or not you are, Minou, the Beast believes it's so, and he isn't going to stop until you are no longer a threat."

  "Meaning dead," she said, and there was a moment when she thought she was falling, when she grasped at the cords that held her aloft and they ran through her fingers.

  ###

  Look for episode 3:

  Chapter 20

  Agni

  "You're shaking," Ezekiel said to her.

  Theda looked at her hands; indeed, they were trembling, the mug of tea in her hands an unsteady thing that made the steam bob on the air with each movement. So were her thighs as she perched on the edge of the sofa in the teensy apartment Ezekiel had brought her to.

  "It's the adrenaline," she said, wondering if it was also the adrenaline that stole all emotion from her voice, reminding her that the ordeal was over and her body knew there was no need to continually pump survival hormones into her muscles.

  Just a few short hours ago and already the memory was fogging out. She wasn't sure if it was the post-traumatic stress of the experience or the residual effects of the godspit she'd been forced to take before Sasha's henchmen had brought her to one of the supercity's councilmen, dressed as a doomed queen for the sport of an elitist client who wanted to live out the fantasy of taking a human life.

  She'd lived a lifetime in the hours she'd spent with that bastard, believing each moment was going to be her last. She squeezed her eyes shut, remembering that, recalling her eager stupidity. Because that was exactly what Sasha had offered her: godspit enough to last out the rest of her life if she played the role. It had seemed a fair enough exchange at the time: dressing up as Anne Boleyn, maybe offering a little booty to a portly Henry VIII, suck back on godspit for the rest of her days. She'd lost her street sense in those moments she'd agreed to Sasha's offer--all because the jonesing battened down those habitual hatches of caution.

  The irony of it made her chuckle to herself, now, and the more she thought about her naiveté, the funnier it seemed. Add to the joke the image of Sasha with his long red wig and his perfect she-male makeup and she had enough material to keep her laughing for days. Oh, the incredible humor of it all.

  "Theda," Ezekiel's worried voice cut through the laughter. Judging by the look on his face, he didn't find anything even remotely funny.

  "What?" She swung her gaze toward that throaty voice.

  "It's going to be okay," he said, obviously interpreting her laughter as nervous fear. An even funnier notion. "You're safe here. Do you want more tea?"

  "No," she said, realizing that her hands were wrapped around a hot mug, that at some point he must have made the beverage for her. The way her hands shook as she held the cup made her think it'd be better if she just sat on them. Even the hot tea couldn't heat them up anyway, they were so cold. She dropped the mug onto the end table and stared at her fingers as they trembled. Aftershock. Post-traumatic physiological stress effects. Maybe even the results of being carried about in the frigid spring dark on Ezekiel's shoulder dressed only in a bra and panties, covered only with an afghan. As good as nude. Covered only in a filthy crocheted Afghan, the one that still wrapped itself around her and smelled of wet cement.

  She turned an angry gaze back to him, thinking about that. Remembering what it was like to bounce against his shoulder with her bare ass hanging out for the world to see, his chin against her hip as he'd lugged her to the spitters'den.

  "I was supposed to be safe there," she said. "You told me we would be safe."

  Hidden in the ranks of the derelicts of an already derelict society; it was as good a plan as any. Hiding right out in the open.

  She watched him swallow, trying to collect his face into something that didn't look as miserable as the expression he wore.

  "And where the hell are the clothes you left that place to go get for me?" She looked down at her still bare thighs, visible through the holes in the afghan.

  He shook his head.

  "Did you buy them at all? It's what you said you were leaving for. Remember? You said I was safe there, that you were just leaving to get me something to wear." When she thought he wouldn't answer, she cursed at him, frustrated.

  She knew the one thing that could help that, help her let it all go. Just let this entire predicament dissolve into nothingness.

  "Give me a fucking smear right now."

  He gripped her wrist at that, pulling her hands out from beneath her bottom and twisting so that she had to face him. He didn't look miserable anymore; he looked furious.

  "You were supposed to stay there. Stay in the room. No one told you to take my money and use it for drugs. If it wasn't for your damned jonesing you would have been safe, just like I said."

  She heard her teeth click together as the anger took her.

  "Don't you dare," she hissed. "Don't you dare blame this on me. Don't you--" she had to struggle to get the words past the frantic clacking of her teeth as the trembling made even her chest shake. "Don't--"

  She couldn't get any more out, damn him, and damn it if she didn't start to cry. Hot tears snaked down her cheeks, pooling in the corners of her mouth, and her throat all but closed up on her. She couldn't even breathe through the constricted paths in her nostrils. And he had her hands, damn him. He had her by the wrists and she couldn't even cover her face in humiliation.

  Just what did he think she would do with that money? Wait patiently for him to return? Buy another night in a place where her drug of choice glazed over nearly every face she encountered. Seeing each expression on her way to the room, how rapt it was, how beyond caring. She knew the feeling beneath those looks. She could taste the bliss deep in the back of her throat, making her skin itch. How was a girl with a problem even supposed to work her way through something like that?

  "You said I would be safe." She began patting down the afghan as though it had pockets, searching the cushions of the couch, running her hands down his jacket, shoving her hands in his pockets. Not thinking, just searching, desperate.

  "Just one," she said. "I know you still have some. Just give me one."

  She couldn't see anymore; the tears made her vision nothing but a wash of color. It could be his face in front of her, or it could be his hands. Nothing mattered. She just wanted a smear. She wanted to let go. There was an itch in the back of her spine sending messages to her legs: escape. Run, flee, make it all go away. She might have heard his voice, but the words, the meaning escaped her. All she knew, all she understood was her own sobbing, her own desperate need. She knew what the trembling was all about now. She should've realized it earlier. It wasn't the stress, not fear. It wasn't because she was cold. Not because her core temperature had dropped at all.

  It was because she was coming down. The bliss wanted control of her body again. The euphoria waited for her, demanded her attention. It was her true master, after all. All of the spitters in the den, they realized something about themselves that she hadn't until just now. She belonged to the godspit. It owned her. Sasha believed he owned all of the human flesh he peddled to his elitist and demented clientele, but the joke was on him
. How incredibly ironic. How absolutely hilarious. If she wasn't shaking so much, she would just lay her head back on her neck, mouth pointing to the ceiling, and let the laugh out.

  It was then that she realized the shaking wasn't coming from within. She was being shaken. She tried hard to focus, levelled her gaze at the face in front of her, and realized it was incredibly close to hers. She could watch Ezekiel's heart beat in his throat, see how his green eyes were searching hers, trying to get her to focus.

  "I need it," she said to him and it took everything she had just to make those words exit through her clenched jaw.

  His fingers found the back of her neck, massaged her occipital bone, the thumb curling around her earlobe, stroking gently. She could melt into those fingers if she just eased her eyes closed. Breathe into the heat they sent down her back, chasing the cold shiver of need. She tried to focus on that.

  "You don't need it," he whispered.

  She licked her dry lips. "I do so."

  "You're stronger than that," he said and the tone of his voice made her eyes flutter open. His gaze had caught on the movement of her tongue as it darted into the corner. "You already beat it once."

  "I never beat it. It just took a dive for a round or two."

  A thin smile crept across his face as he leaned closer. Those summer bleached green eyes went to her mouth and stayed there for a long moment while her heart started to dance in her chest. His fingers feathered their way down the back of her neck, easing the afghan from her shoulders. Only then did his gaze slip away from her lips and onto the pulse in her throat. He seemed to be waiting, watching for a change in the rhythm. Tentative fingers whispered over the place where her pulse throbbed, ran down the length of her arm. Something shifted in the way her body trembled as his other hand moved to the opposite side of her neck, testing the heart rate there.

  "Adrenaline," he murmured, his eyes mesmerized by the frenzy of its beating.

  Her heart stuttered when his lips touched the hollow of her shoulder. A small groan came from somewhere deep in his throat, and that, too, surprised her. She didn't dare move; even though every muscle in her body froze in indecision, some primal energy forced her heart to race. She imagined he felt its beating against his lips as they tasted the skin sheathing her pulse.

  "I can make you forget," he whispered against her skin and the way his breath shuddered against the goose flesh that rose in response made her throat ache. "I can take the fear away, Minou. Let me get you high. Let me be your addiction."

  Her heart beat so loudly in her ears she knew he must hear it. She almost wanted to apologize for the thunderous sound, but even as she opened her mouth he sealed his lips over her top one, letting his tongue probe within, tentative at first, questioning, and then claiming her mouth with a sure mastery that told her any opportunity for refusal was over. It didn't matter; she was already responding. She allowed her hands to tangle in his hair, pulling him closer; her body melting to his. He was right; her need was evaporating in the bald face of her desire. Images flitted through her mind, of the two of them in the spitters'den, the sounds of pleasure all about them, the feel of another woman's fingers within her, stroking against the ribs of her G-spot, with Ezekiel's cock pressing against her belly, making her wish it was him in there filling her.

  She remembered the sense of danger that had heightened her senses back in the den, but she also remembered how her body had fevered for his touch, and how it took ignition like spark to tinder. Like it was doing now.

  She broke away from his kiss, gasping for air, trying to fuel the fire in her body that was even now coiling within her womb. Her face went to his neck as she strained against him, her tongue probing his earlobe, nipping, pulling, sucking on it until she felt the same response from him on her shoulder. Until she could hear him panting like she was, struggling to feed her lungs with air enough to stoke the greedy fire in her body.

  His palms went to both sides of her face, easing her from his throat, positioning her so that he could take her lips again, tangle his tongue with hers.

  He moaned into her mouth, pausing long enough to drag in a breath from her lungs and return it with a shudder. She wanted to tear away from his kiss, to trail the tip of her tongue against the skin and taste the salt of his perspiration tinged with the leftover taste of Cologne, but he gripped her so fiercely, keeping her trapped beneath his mouth that she couldn't do more than squirm beneath the hotspots he created with each touch of his lips to her skin. When she tried to break away, to work the clothing from him, and place her own fevered lips against his flesh, he pinioned her tighter.

  "No," he said against her jaw. His thumb prodded at the corner of her mouth, poking itself in, tasting faintly of chai spices. "I'm nowhere near finished."

  Hands that trapped her face beneath his kiss moved apart so that one fisted in her hair and the other moved to the small of her back, pressing her closer against him. Through his jeans, through the thickness of the afghan that pooled about her hips, his erection strained for her. He strained for her, forcing her pubis against the hardness of his cock with the one hand, grinding her into him, not satisfied until both hands planted on her hips, rocking her against him.

  She could swear her clitoris was throbbing in time with her pounding heart. She wanted him more than she wanted the release of ecstasy, more than the escape of forgetfulness. She wanted him more in that instant than she wanted her heart to beat.

  She tilted her hips, lifting to straddle him, making her spine arch as his fingers wrenched aside the uselessly small crotch of her thong; she wanted to give him access, needed it. She couldn't help but gasp when one rigid finger found its way beneath and plunged inside, pressed deep into the tissue within, not pumping; just pressing and releasing, pressing and releasing until she was soaked with desire.

  She realized she was shuddering, that she couldn't stop either the trembling or the movement of her own hips as she rode his fingers and it was with a shock that she realized he was taking her to climax, that in a few seconds more she would climb heights of ecstasy only ever matched by the first few moments of taking a godspit smear onto her tongue. She imagined it tickling her tastebuds, electrifying her synapses, and then it was the smooth head of his cock that she was imagining, the swell of it against her tongue. She could barely breathe for the craving of it.

  When he emptied her sex of his fingers, confusion whispered fearful thoughts into her mind. It was a trick. Some malicious way to show her how badly off she was, how filthy an addict she was, so willing to trade herself for a lick of a smear like any other addict in the spitters'den. She deserved to be scorned.

  Her eyes flew open, expecting to see a mocking look on his face, expecting him to reveal that it had been a ploy to divert her and nothing more, but what she saw was hunger so primitive it made her gulp down the protest that leapt to her tongue. Her gaze fell to his mouth, unable to think of anything but tasting him again, and when she did she realized it wasn't enough. Not nearly enough.

  He scooped her from the couch, sheathing himself in her legs as he stood. His arms went around her, crushing her against him so that she felt like little more than a film of oil against his clothes. His lips dragged over her jawline, coming to rest on the crook of her shoulder, the rags of his breath sending waves of shivers down her spine.

  She wanted to climb higher on his hips, find the rise of his erection through his jeans, work them off just by grinding against him so that she could part for the crown of his cock and let him slip inside. So entangled was she, that when he took his arms from around her, she didn't so much as slip from his waist.

  He worked his hands beneath her, fumbling for the front of his jeans.

  "What are you doing?"

  "What I've wanted to do since the night I had you in that tub," he said.

  She barely felt the movement, all she knew was that she felt the cold shock of the countertop against her bare ass, the heat of his palms as he pressed her thighs apart, the finger that re-en
tered her, testing for access.

  Even as he managed to pull his jeans open enough that she felt the satiny hardness of his cock demanding entrance to her sex, she heard the sound of a key in the door. The hammering of her heart echoed in her ears but this time it flooded her veins with fear, expelling the desire. It had all the effectiveness of a snowball striking overheated skin.

  Ezekiel backed away, his hand in the pocket of his jacket, leaving her emptied of him as the door yawned open.

  Chapter 21

  She barely had time to climb down from the counter before the door opened, revealing a narrow hipped, narrow shouldered young man with immaculate taste judging by his attire, but with a very busy hairdresser judging by the faded purple streak in his hair.

  "What in the hell are you doing?" the intruder demanded of Ezekiel as Theda launched herself for the sofa and the cover of her Afghan.

  "Setting up for bingo." Ezekiel eased the zipper over his erection. His tone was calm, almost too much so for the cold fury that stole his face.

  The man took note of Ezekiel's bedraggled state, the look of frustration, and the way he raked his hand through his hair.

  "Oh, hell. Not on my counter." The intruder's nose wrinkled in disgust. "Tell me you weren't just fucking that nasty-assed spitter chick on my sideboard."

  "I wasn't. Thanks to your shitty timing." Ezekiel's hand crept toward the outside of his thigh as though it wanted to be closer to the boot that held the monstrous knife Theda knew was in there. "Who the hell are you?"

  "I own this shit hole," the intruder said. "For Pete's sake make her put something on." He walked farther into the apartment, shielding his eyes as though offended. "I don't know how the hell the two of you got in here, but you got exactly long enough for her to pull some pants over her ass before I start pulling out the cast-iron pans and swinging like Babe Ruth."

  "Eddie gave us a key," Ezekiel drawled.

  "Eddie?" The fellow's demeanor instantly changed as his hand came away from his brow and clenched at his side anxiously. "How is he? Did you see him? Did he ask about me?"