Born to Darkness (42 page)

And now Mac was standing so close to him, she could feel his body heat. She had to tilt her head back to look up into his eyes as he frowned down at her.

It should have pissed her off—his proprietary attitude combined with the manhandling, except he wasn’t really manhandling her. Yes, he was still holding her wrist, but he was being careful not to hurt her. Still, she was glad she’d ordered the computer to shut off the sound of her heart, because it was now undeniably racing.

She shook her head. “Just … other ways that don’t involve you.”

“Do you mean with other
people
?” he asked. He was jealous—she could feel it. “Other test subjects—other
men
?”

“Or women,” Mac said. “Sex is sex, right?”

He blinked. “Are you … really bisexual?”

“No,” she said. “Just an asshole. Who likes jerking your chain.”

He laughed at that—a low chuckle. But the warmth of his breath brushed her face and she found herself looking at his mouth. It was just a glance, she looked away almost immediately, but he didn’t miss it, and he pulled her even closer so that his leg touched hers, and her breasts brushed his chest.

“No way,” Shane murmured, “am I going to let you
experiment
with anyone else. That’s not gonna happen.”

“
Let
me?” she asked. “I don’t think you get to
let me
do anything.”

“Oh, yeah?” he said. “Because right now, I’m going to let you kiss me.” Now he was watching her mouth, and she fully expected him to lower his just a few scant inches. But he didn’t.

And he didn’t.

Because he was waiting for her to kiss him.

“Take your time,” Shane murmured. “I’ve got all day.”

Despite the fact that Mac held the power, he was somehow able to resist her. And she was the one who surrendered—she couldn’t stand it anymore. She went up on her toes even as she pulled his head down and kissed him—knowing that she was making a huge mistake, but unable to stop herself.

The right thing to do would be to walk out that door and find some other unattached Potential willing to sign her permission slip and participate in this test of her expanding integration levels. Because
sex
was
sex. It was better to keep it purely physical—to keep her emotions out of it, because no matter how she played it, it wasn’t going to be an emotional encounter for whomever she hooked up with. It couldn’t be.

Everyone wanted her. Guaranteed. That was her power. Everyone wanted her—which meant no one really did. Because they didn’t really want
her
.

Who she was had nothing to do with it. It was all about manipulation and control and biology.

Although the bitch of it was that the emotion that her victims experienced read, to her, like real love. But it wasn’t real—it was purely a reaction. It was no different than someone who was allergic to strawberries eating some and getting hives.

Still, Mac heard herself moan as Shane angled his head to kiss her harder, deeper, as he massaged her breast, his hand already up beneath her shirt.

“I know I should make you leave, but … Damn,” Shane breathed before he kissed her again.

And Mac knew she wasn’t going to stop them either. She wanted this too badly. Even though she knew it was going to come back and kick her in the head.

She wanted …

God, she wanted to feel good, to erase all of the ugliness that the world had dumped on her in the past few hellish hours.

And she wanted her integration levels to jump right to sixty. Shit, she’d take fifty-five. But she wanted it to come from no-strings sex. She wanted proof that it wasn’t Shane alone who enhanced her—that she could have sex with anyone and get the same results.

But most of all, she didn’t want to wonder if—maybe—Shane really did like her, too. She didn’t want to spend any time at all wondering if maybe his wanting to screw her was a natural and honest response to genuine attraction. Like, maybe he honestly had a thing for short women with round faces, shitty hair, and small boobs. Maybe he thought she was funny or smart or interesting, and his wanting to fuck her sideways had nothing to do with her power to make everyone want to fuck her sideways.

She didn’t want to wonder that, so she purposely took all wondering off the table by letting him have a nuclear blast of her power.

“Holy shit,” he breathed as he could no longer resist her. He tried to unfasten her pants with one hand as he unbuckled his belt with his other. “I gotta …”

Mac knew exactly what he needed and she helped him by kicking off her sneakers and pushing her pants down her legs, as he wrestled with his zipper, still kissing her all the while.

Then, God, her pants were off, and he’d freed himself enough to pick her up—still kissing her—and wrap her legs around his waist.

And just like that he was inside of her, which felt unbelievably good, but there just wasn’t enough resistance even though he desperately tried to get deeper by pulling her closer. And she thought, then, that he was going to carry her into the bedroom, because he headed in that direction, but she was wrong, he was going for the wall.

She felt it hit her back and then, God, they both got what they wanted—what she’d wanted since the last time they’d done this—and they both cried out because it was that damn good, except now Shane was laughing, too, as he moved against her, inside her, as he broke away from kissing her to look into her eyes.

“You’re unbelievable, you know that?” he breathed. “You kill me—you’re just so freaking great …”

And Mac roughly pulled his mouth down to hers and kissed him again, because, no, she really didn’t want to know.

This wasn’t going to be fun.

Bach’s back was twingeing—which happened when he pushed himself too hard, or for too long without significant rest.

Or when he was under significant stress.

And yes, his session with Stephen Diaz, learning all about controlled dreaming, had been a tad stressful. Bach had been exposed to a serious amount of TMI about the other Greater-Than’s fledgling relationship with Elliot Zerkowski.

Diaz had been embarrassed by the content of the dreams he’d programmed himself to have—dreams he’d managed to project, while sleeping, into the mind of a Less-Than.

Which truly was remarkable.

And while Diaz had been successful in showing Bach exactly what he believed he’d done both to control and project his dreams, there was no guarantee that Bach would be able to access those same neural pathways and open a connection, via Anna, to Nika.

Still, he was going to try.

His back twinged again, but it was nothing, however, compared to the pain of the crash, or of the horrible sensation of no-pain that had followed for so long, all those years ago.

So he ignored it as he looked at Anna, who’d taken off her shoes and positioned herself somewhat stiffly atop the comforter on the bed. With an IV in her arm, the sleep aid that dripped into her bloodstream had quickly kicked in.

Bach’s discomfort was nothing, too, compared to the sacrifices Anna was willing to make to find her little sister.

The lab tech, an older woman named Haley, was sitting at the computer, monitoring both Anna’s and Bach’s vitals, and watching to make sure nothing improper happened—outside of Anna’s head, at least. Her eyebrows went up as Bach took a fleece blanket from the cabinet and opened it, spreading it out over Anna, even though she’d refused it while awake.

“It gets cold in here,” he told the tech, not wanting to admit that the relaxed abandon with which Anna now slept seemed too private for either of them to witness.

“Do you need one, too, sir?” Haley asked him.

“I’m fine,” Bach said tersely, as he pulled up a chair and got to work.

Even though he knew he had Anna’s full permission to enter her mind, he still felt awkward about doing so. The unconscious mind
was
more malleable. He could, quite easily, plant ideas and suggestions in her head—as simple as
the sky is green
.

After which, Anna would wake up and be convinced that that was a truth—until she went outside and saw the sky for herself.
Although, even after a visual, she
still
might not believe her own eyes. Some people were naturally programmed to reject easily proven truths that challenged ideas and beliefs that had been deeply planted in their psyches. If Anna were in that subset, he’d have to go back into her head to correct this absolute “fact” that he’d put there.

With a related technique, given just slightly more time, he could have taught her Farsi. Or advanced calculus.

Or—if he were immoral and twisted—instead of saying that the sky was green, he could implant within her the belief that, in order to find Nika more quickly, she should have sex with him as often as possible.

And the truth was that Anna couldn’t possibly know that Bach would never, ever do something as heinous as that.

And yet here she was, willing to lay herself open and vulnerable to him, anyway.

It was sobering and awesome, and it shook him a little, even as it helped maintain his faith in humanity.

Of course, he was still shaken by his foray into Diaz’s mind—and not by Diaz’s unbridled sexual attraction to another man, but by the sheer force and enormity of the Greater-Than’s feelings for Elliot.

Love.

It had stirred Bach to be surrounded by that certainty, that absolute and passionate conviction.

It made him remember …

What it felt like, what it was, what he had once been, what he could no longer be …

Bach took a deep breath and exhaled and then slipped into Anna slowly, carefully, aware that the drug in her system could provide some incoherence or added mental chaos. But he’d waded through some very convoluted minds before. The key was in staying alert, and in retreating back into his own self with some regularity, as if swimming underwater and coming up for air.

Bach closed his eyes as he sank into the warmth that was uniquely Anna Taylor, and he forced himself to focus on sensing
any trail or train of half-formed thoughts or contemplation that might lead him to memories of Nika.

That was the first thing he had to do—find and learn to recognize Anna’s little sister—before he could attempt to create a dream message for Anna to send to the girl.

He immediately found a powerful memory, still deeply linked to Anna’s emotional core—of Nika, needing comfort after their mother died. Anna had stayed strong as the much younger girl sobbed in her arms, even though she was close to overwhelmed herself—not merely with grief from the loss, but with fear of this new and impossibly heavy responsibility of caring for her little sister.
We’ll be okay
, she’d told Nika.
We’re gonna be okay.…

Her thoughts skittered and jumped then—like an old-fashioned LP recording onto a completely different track—to the image of a man, tall and dark-haired, imposing in a business suit, red power tie, his handsome face stern with anger. He swung his arm and delivered a resounding openhanded blow that knocked Bach to the ground.

What the hell …?

But then Bach realized he was seeing and feeling this from Anna’s perspective. He’d slipped, deeply, into this new memory—or maybe it was a dream.

You think that gives you the right to
steal
from me?
the man shouted at him—at Anna.
You owe me, bitch! You get back here!

But Anna fled the room, sobbing and frightened. She made it out into a hallway, but the man was chasing her. He caught her by the wrist, his fingers bruising her as he jerked her to a stop, as he dragged her through another set of doors and across a plush maroon carpet, where he threw her onto a king-sized bed. She scrambled to get away from him, but she couldn’t because he was on top of her, suffocatingly heavy, pinning her down even though she fought him, kicking and hitting and shrieking—
No! No! Don’t do this! Don’t!
—as the dark-haired man slapped her again, hard enough to rattle her brain, as he tore at her clothes, and
—No!—
shoved himself roughly, painfully inside of her—

Jesus!

Bach pulled himself up and out, opening his eyes and gulping for air as he nearly fell out of his seat.

Haley was on her feet across the room, her eyes wide. “Are you all right, Doctor?”

“Yes,” he gasped. “Shh!” He closed his eyes as he bent almost completely in two, back of his hand pressed to his forehead as he held up one finger, hoping the tech would understand that he needed her to be silent, to stay back, because as awful and as violent as that nightmare had been, there was something about it, something that he’d recognized or seen before or maybe something that
Anna
had seen before …

But
—damn it
!—it was too elusive, too awful, and it was gone.

Still breathing hard, Bach straightened up and his back tweaked, but this time he ignored it because it didn’t hurt him even a fraction as much as knowing that he was going to have to go back there, into the thick of Anna’s nightmare.

Or memory—he couldn’t tell which it was. Nightmare, memory, or a nightmare of a memory?