by Angel Payne
“So can I help facilitate that?”
He quirks one side of his mouth. “You just did.” He gathers me against him, nestling my head atop his chest. “And you still are.”
I readjust a little, scooting my ear right over the strong thumping of his heart. Right away a yawn escapes me, and I start wondering who’s really getting the subliminal lullaby here—but I won’t push my luck on that point right now. I have bigger fish to fry with the advantage he’s bounced into my court, so to speak.
“Fine. We’ll sleep.” I roam a hand up and down the twin ladders of his abs—each time, taking my touch more discernibly beneath his navel. “On one condition.”
A taut rumble begins between his lungs. “And why don’t I think it includes another stellar field trip to hell?”
“Because you’d be right.”
“Should I be afraid?”
I expect him to finish that with a grumble but instead get a chuckle, making me feel a little guilty about going for the emo ballad soundtrack again. But I wouldn’t be pushing that play button if this wasn’t damn important. So I push back up a little, planting a hand in the middle of his chest while securing the lock of his full gaze with mine.
“The Emmalina: Handle With Care sticker stays off.” I enforce the order by compressing my lips. “We’re partners, damn it—and from now on, even if I can’t always be on the front lines with you, we stay partners. We’re going to have some bumps in the road, okay—but guess what? All couples have bumps.” And because his laugh already leads me there, I invite a moment of levity into the mix too, seesawing my head with a light laugh. “Our bumps are just a little…different…than most.”
And again, while I expect him to switch back to the emo rock, he quirks his lips with a sarcastic smirk and glides his hands down in a twisted bid to usurp the finger comb-out with a divine butt massage. “Says the wise and beautiful goddess with the enchanted and amazing ass?”
I sock his shoulder. “Are you trying to bribe me, Mr. Richards?”
“Depends.”
“On what?”
“On if it’s working.”
I swallow back my blissful moan though wonder if that’s really the choice of a wise goddess. Showing my hand means I get a lot more of this, albeit with the man’s gloating grin in my face. But is that such a bad thing either? “Hmmm.” I stall for myself as much as him. “That depends.”
His long chuckle sends delicious vibrations through his whole body. Yes, even into those strong, divine fingers of his. “Ohhh, it’s working,” he murmurs. “Just admit it, or I’ll use my x-ray eyes to tell everyone your panty color at breakfast.”
I give up the shoulder bops, resorting to tweaking his nipple. “Since when were you okay with me wearing panties anywhere, Mr. Richards?” Then slither my thigh up, unable to hold back my moan any longer while gliding along the proud stalk at his center.
“Damn good point,” the man softly snarls, layering his seductive sound over my aroused sigh. His jaw visibly tenses, and I run my touch along its alluring strength.
“I love you, Mr. Richards.” And only because I do, I back off with the wanton thigh flirtation. The man has literally started hearing voices. He’s past the point of exhaustion.
“And fuck, how I love you, Miss Crist.” As he kneads my back cheeks deeper, he adds in a tender murmur, “And enjoy the fuck out of your oh-so-distinctive ‘panty color.’”
I hum while dipping down to kiss his pectoral, fighting the mists of sleep threatening to snuff my consciousness. “I have trained you well, young superstud.”
But in the end, I’m helpless against the onslaught of the slumber. As the fog rolls thicker over my mind, I’m aware of one last thing: the caress of his lips across my forehead followed by an equally worshipful whisper. “That you have, my velvet goddess. That you have.”
REECE
Unsurprisingly, Emma has drifted easily back to sleep.
Also unsurprisingly, I haven’t.
Not after what happened in my own goddamned bed.
In my own goddamned head.
Again.
I throw on a pair of nylon shorts, prowling downstairs and heading for the pool deck, intending to turn the ice beneath my skin into sweat—but I only make it as far as the ground-floor office before Faline swoops in again, even stronger now.
Reece Andrew Richards…
I try to sit. Lurch back up in such a violent rush, the rolling chair behind the desk spins away and slams the wall. Her whisper in my senses isn’t such a little sigh anymore. More and more, it’s as if she’s standing next to me. Preparing to torture me again.
You know it’s the truth.
You belong to me.
You always have and always will.
The crashing chair sends an echo through the house like a gunshot—though at the moment, if it meant expelling Faline and her goddamned sighs from my brain, I’d willingly take the brunt of a real rifle blast.
And soon, you will know that in full. And accept it with gratitude.
“Never.” Yes, I’m snarling at voices that are only in my head. Yes, I’m punching at the granite stone wall that stands in for the phantoms, really seeing the wisdom of incorporating the ridge as part of the house’s structure. Yes, I’m getting the horrifying correlation between this moment and the one like it from last night, when I tried taking down a whole cliff in the canyon with the same unyielding rage—at the same conniving bitch.
Only now, she hasn’t just decimated one of my best friends from the inside out.
She’s tromping through my goddamned mind.
Why? How?
That same mind fires an answer at me with terrifying speed. An image, flashing through like a snippet of a nightmare—because that’s what it still feels like.
The moments before Kane begged me to end him…
That electric worm he tried ramming into my ear…
The unbearable pain that made me fight back…
And what if you didn’t get it all, cariño?
What if I really did get inside…just a little?
What if I am there this very moment, sliding through your synapses and wading into your blood? And what if I soon shall be swimming there? In every thought you have. In every drop you bleed…
“Never!”
But as I prepare to repeat the snarl with at least fifty more punches into the rock, there’s a movement in my periphery. I whip a glare to the person attached to it, with his bleary daze, mussed hair, and barely zipped khaki shorts—though he tosses back some respect by straightening his stance and smacking a hand to the middle of his chest, which is covered by a wrinkled T-shirt centered by a grinning Naruto.
“Dude.” Sawyer shakes his head. “You’ve either had too much coffee or need a shit ton more.” He holds up a steaming coffee mug with his other hand. “Take mine if you need. Your mom brewed a pot of Peet’s deliciousness.”
I force myself to take a deep breath and jerk my head no. “Not going to help.” I don’t know why I’m so certain of that, aside from the fact that the last twenty-four hours have included one bizarre funeral, a couple of paradigm-changing orgasms, an attack on my adopted city, ending that attack by having to take my friend’s life, and not a second’s worth of sleep—which all leads to the last nail in my sanity coffin in the form of a Faline-themed ghost stalking my fucking mind.
And there’s where my certitude comes from. Last time I checked, caffeine and coffins weren’t a winning combination. I’m not going to be that guy, traumatized to the point of postmortem sympathy feels for Kane, including any credence to the bitch queen who hardwired herself into his head—and might have maneuvered him into implanting me with a similar device.
Doesn’t m-m-matter anymore… It’s done… All…done…
“No.” Though I snarl it at the memory, Sawyer barely flinches. Clearly he still thinks I’m making a personal mission statement about the coffee—or not. Not a lot the guy doesn’t know or flinch at about this crazy journey of mine so far
. He knows I’ve already rendered my sacrifice to the Faline Garand altar in the church of the Consortium. He also knows about the two, sometimes three, torture sessions I endured each day and how that adds up to nearly four hundred hours the woman has already played Nurse Ratched with my mind while her minions played lunatic lab fun with my body.
But what he doesn’t know is that I was sometimes too weak to fight it.
That at times, the pain of her in my psyche was easier to face than the agony of the changes in my blood.
But I’m not that weak anymore. Even stumbling back to the runaway rolling chair and then plunking into it, I’m five thousand kinds of ready to backhand that bitch out of my brain faster than a fly on a fucking picnic basket.
“All right.” Foley extends both words with his unique combination of casual and insightful, bypassing the two modular chairs in the room in favor of the loveseat against the wall—or at least that’s what the catalogue called the thing. I haven’t gone near the damn thing, which looks more like a crostini of leather supported by aluminum chopsticks, but Foley mounts the thing with the grace of a bobcat and then dangles his coffee cup from between his braced elbows. “So what will help?”
“A lobotomy?” I retort.
He takes a contemplative sip from his cup. “Things went that shitty yesterday?”
I rise again, fighting prickling heat along my skin, feeling once more like a pinball in a damn coffin. “What time is it?” I ask, though my cell is sitting on the desk.
“Little after six.” Foley, being the ideal wingman he is, simply accepts the deflection. He even adds, as if knowing I need it, “In the morning.”
“And you’re here now…why?”
“Because Lydia is.” To his credit, there’s still no flinch in his tone or gaze. To his further credit, he leaves his coffee untouched as our stares lock. “Yesterday was rough on everyone. Being here for her was important.”
I tilt my head and hone my gaze. “She’s become that important?” As I lean against the desk, I insert, “Asking for a friend. As in my fiancée. Who’s likely to grill you harder about your intentions than Laurel and Todd Crist combined.”
His lips form a firm line. He still doesn’t falter. Not even to take a Cool Hand Sawyer whiff of his java. “You can tell Emma I like the grill hot.” And finally lifts the cup back up, indulging a huge gulp, as if knowing how thoroughly that’s going to shut my maw for a long moment, before going at me again with the jabbing jade slice of his scrutiny. “We done with pissing on the charcoals now? You want to tell me what really had you ready to turn your office into a quarry?” And once more, because my brain’s the real quarry and he’s probably been snoring into ’Dia’s chest for a few hours, he’s more ready on the new uptake. “What the fuck happened on that rooftop, Richards?”
I cobble together a tight grunt. “You were there.”
“Watching from the chopper,” he volleys. “Which was a good thing, since Angelique kept wanting to jump out and help you.”
“Help me?” I’m almost glad for the open perplexity I can display. “And she reasoned that out to you…how?”
He takes another drag on his coffee while a frown makes its way across his face. With his gaze still lowered at whatever’s left in his cup, he states, “She told me she could hear your…wavelengths.”
“My what?”
“Not just yours.” His scowl gives way to a more typical Foley expression. His aloofness comes out when our “chats” have to veer toward off-manual curiosities like my light saber fingers and his fondness for wasabi ice cream. Right now, it’s probably helpful. “Yours and Kane’s.”
I crunch a deep glare. “The hell?”
He smooths a hand over the air. “Well, think about it a second. Those crapsticks dicked around with her brain. In her brain. Stands to reason she’d come out of the process just as altered as you were, albeit with an incubation period for her noggin to heal from the trauma and relearn its new electrical pathways. With her, it’s more of a cerebral thing, based in biofeedback and the static force of emotions on the air.”
I shove back to my feet. “And you’re saying that these new—what, powers?—just magically manifested yesterday during my showdown with Kane?”
“Not powers,” Foley counters. “At least not to her. For fuck’s sake”—he glances out the door, as if worried Angie might fly out in a rage any second from the guest-room wing—“don’t say powers around her.”
“Why not?” As if I’m that fond of the term.
“Her longing to be one of the ‘miracle mutants’ was how Faline got her claws into Angie to begin with. It’s the downfall that led her to the Consortium’s dark side.”
“Those fuckers have a light side?”
“You know what I mean,” he rebuts, swinging his posture back around. “Though apparently, she’s been dealing with this shit, as well as how to hide it better, for a few weeks now.” He throws both hands up. “But you didn’t hear that part from me.”
“A few weeks.” That nearly falls out of me as a question too—though as I say the words, the answer already starts to fill itself in. “Which was another reason she played hide and seek with the remote check-ins.” And favoring the hide part.
“And the fact that she was attempting to salvage Kane’s sorry ass.”
I can’t help but let a morose silence go by. “A lot of good the effort did her,” I mumble. “Or any of us.”
Another heavy pause, this time of Foley’s choosing. In the second before I get uncomfortably curious about it, the guy speaks up again. “You had to do what you had to do, man.”
And suddenly, uncomfortable is the tip of the fucking iceberg of what I feel. “What…I…”
“It’s all right.” Foley clunks his empty mug on a platform built into the loveseat and rolls easily to his feet at the same time I stumble back, feeling freakishly cold. “Seriously, buddy. He wanted to go. He was begging you for it. Angie sensed that too. She was torn apart by it, but she got it—especially after I told her I’d be doing the same thing in Kane’s place.”
From the new stiffness in his posture to the steady empathy on his face, I see that every word he speaks is real and heartfelt. That doesn’t stop me from wheeling away, lacing my hands at the back of my head as I spit out, “That fucking so?” As rage and remorse sweep in, I squeeze the heels of my hands in, praying I have the power to push every thought out of my skull. “You’d be fucking begging me to zap your neck in half like a toothpick?”
“Or jam a pistol up my mouth and pull the trigger,” Foley answers quietly. “Or stab a dagger through my heart or wrap a noose around my neck.” His tone is so absolute, I almost wonder if he’s pausing just to scroll through his phone for extra morbid images. “Whatever it took to take me out before facing a lifetime of being Faline Garand’s dancing monkey.”
I lean forward until my forehead knocks against the plate-glass window behind the desk. “You don’t fucking say.”
Despite the heat already permeating the glass, a shiver invades my body as well as my voice. Foley doesn’t miss either. “And what the hell are you saying?”
I drop my hands, only to lift one back up and sprawl my fingers against the window. Behind me, Foley is thankfully still. Around us, the air is equally so. Still, I don’t allow myself any easy breaths. The ghost could return any second.
But maybe, if I just say something first…
Especially to a friend who gets it more than most. The only person on the globe who literally might be hiding more violent secrets than me…
“Richards?” he prompts again. It’s not a mandate, but he’s not going to just walk out of here for a refill on his coffee because I’ve chosen to clam up.
So it’s time to haul in a long breath and find my fucking voice again.
“Foley.” All right, it’s a start. Not a great one, but he’ll have to deal. “You really do know what it’s like to be a dancing monkey for someone, don’t you?”
At last he do
es move, coming around to occupy the same spot on the desk I vacated. “It was more like being a pinned moth, but yeah.”
“Better.” I snort. “Pinned moth. Yeah. That’s it.” I twist my fingers into a tight fist and then turn my whole hand, perfectly positioned to take out the entire window if I have to. “So…did you…do you…ever think about the monster who put the pins in?” A morning wind kicks up across the ridge. I watch it move through the bright wildflowers and grasses, ordering myself to absorb the inherent peace of the swaying plants. “I mean, still?” I stammer. “Not on purpose or anything.”
“Like in nightmares?” Foley probes. “Well, fuck yeah. You can’t help what your subconscious drums up.”
“Or even…not in nightmares.”
He grunts softly. “Not if I can help it.” Then shifts a little, his T-shirt and khakis rustling as if he’s crossing his arms. “But sometimes, something will bring up…memories. Visceral shit, mostly. A smell or a sound.” A new rustle, giving away his shrug this time. “Still can’t listen to Van Morrison for that very reason.”
“Van Morrison?” I pivot enough to shoot him a quizzical look. “You have to avoid Van Morrison?”
“Didn’t say it was easy, man.”
“No shit.”
We’re quiet again, though I turn to look out the window once more—and nearly hope he’ll drop the subject and just get back to offering me coffee. The sun’s nearly all the way up, and the bitch-ghost in my head seems to have vanished along with the night. Thank fuck.
Are you ready for more fun, papi? I certainly am…
And that’s what I get for allowing myself to breathe normally again.
“Shit!”
And as deeply as I stash the hiss beneath my lower registers, Foley’s back on both feet again. Looming in my peripheral again. Intense and unyielding and one hundred percent his undeterred PI self again. In short, he’s yanked out every trait I keep him on the payroll for. I’m just not sure how epic the proverbial shoe feels on the other goddamned foot.
“All right, man.” He comes closer but seems to know what’s too close, stopping short of that boundary before turning and leaning back against the support beam that bisects the window. “Ice breaker time is over. Time for the real work.”
