Skin Tight (30 page)

“I was worried about you.”

“Go. Will try to wipe the cameras before anyone notices.”

“The pain makes it hard to focus,” she guessed.

“Yeah. Please go.”

Impotence made her angry. She had spent her whole life obeying orders. She was tired of toeing the line for fear of consequences. Rowan held the unspoken threat of the cells over her to compel her cooperation, and now, the one time she’d dared disobey, Taye was trying to banish her back to the safe walls that held her prisoner.

“Not just yet. When you aren’t injured, how’s your control?”

“Good.” His green eyes reflected anger and frustration. “Might be another reason why he had me beaten. Was nearly ready.”

“Then you just need a few days to heal. Try not to piss him off.” Gillie held up a hand, forestalling his instinctive protest. “I know you love to provoke him, but remember, I can’t get out of here without you. I
need
you, Taye.”

“I’ll be good,” he growled.

She couldn’t do anything else for him, but she knew who could. Gillie hurried out of the cell, which locked behind her when the door clicked shut. At this hour, Silas would be eating in the small employee lounge. As she’d suspected, he was spooning up some soup while staring at the television. He wasn’t homely per se, just . . . unnerving.

“Silas,” she said softly.

He turned to regard her with dead, black eyes. “You’re not supposed to be in here.”

“Neither are you, I think. Do you like your job?”

The big man made a sound like an inner tube deflating and studied his enormous hands as if he’d never seen them before. “No.”

“You hurt Taye.”

“I know. Rowan made me.”

“How?”

In answer, Silas turned his head and showed her a faint blue pulsing light, inset behind his ear. Jesus, it had to be a control mechanism. Silas wasn’t an employee; he was a former test subject.

“I’m going to die here,” he said, and went back to his soup.

Suddenly bolder than she’d ever been in her life, she touched his arm. He tensed at the simple contact and looked at her hand as if it were an alien appendage complete with tentacles. “What if I said you could get out? Would you do something for me?”

Silas put the spoon down. “I might.”

“Taye might be able to help you. He could short out that gizmo in your head. I don’t know where that would leave you, maybe you’d revert to however you were before, but at least you wouldn’t be under Rowan’s control anymore. That has to be worth something.”

He didn’t think about it overlong. “What do you want me to do?”

The rug was
soft beneath Mia’s bare belly.

Søren held her arms outstretched at her sides. If she was unwilling, she wouldn’t raise her hips for him. She came up on her knees, chest flat on the floor. He wrenched her thighs open, showing her how he wanted her. It was incredibly arousing to hear his harsh, labored breaths as he positioned himself behind her, but his heat threatened to ignite her utterly, leaving her no mind with which to appreciate his abandon.

There was no tenderness in him now, no delicacy. With one rough thrust, he took her with the fury of a man too often alone, desires too often denied. She should have felt vulnerable, and yet she felt as if she owned him, as if her slightest whisper could break him wide open.

“Mia. Mia, I need this,” he growled, sounding angry about it. “I need you.”

“Take me,” she whispered, but she had the oddest feeling it was
she
who took him.

The sex that time was savage. He was less focused on her pleasure, more centered on exorcising personal demons. They fired his ferocity, driving his thrusts, but she found it easy to lose herself in the storm of his desire.

Later, she lay in Søren’s arms.

He’d gotten easier with touching, more accustomed to affection. At least he no longer recoiled when she reached for him. To her surprise, he was the most patient lover she’d ever known. This anomaly aside, he spent hours nuzzling the curve of her throat, appearing to luxuriate in the feel of her skin. He kissed as if he had nothing else to do for the rest of his life: slow, drugging kisses, where his lips played with hers until she went boneless.

He had just lifted his head from one such kiss, and his gray gaze glittered as he gazed down at her. “I can’t get enough of you.”

“Is that a bad thing?”

“A little alarming.”

“How come?”

His eyes answered where his lips would not:
I need you, and I don’t want to.
As if he could not help himself, he kissed her again, this time fiercely. By the time he pulled back, she was panting, her peace supplanted with sexual arousal. With him, it only took a touch or a look and she was ready to do the wickedest things.

“I love your mouth.” Feather light, he brushed her lips with his fingertips, tracing the contours. “After.”

“After you’ve made it red, wet, and swollen. A wanton mouth.”

He sucked in a breath. “Yes.”

“You’re not as civilized as you pretend.”

“I’m not civilized at all. You’d do well to remember that.”

“How can I forget?” Mia flexed her fingers, looking at the faint marks that encircled her wrists. “You lost control completely.”

“You drove me to it.”

So she had. Remembered power surged through her. Driving this disciplined man past restraint—when he had borne
so
much—made her a little crazy. Reckless.

“And you took me on the floor like an animal.”

He caught her hand. “Stop. Or I might do it again.”

“That’s supposed to be an inducement to stop?”

She wished she knew more about him. The bits and pieces she’d gleaned elsewhere didn’t encompass the whole. If she could put all the pieces together, then—

Maybe I can learn how to love him.
Søren wasn’t like other men; this, she understood instinctively. It was miraculous she’d come this far, blindly. His lover.

Søren laughed. “You make a good point.”

There would never be a better moment to broach this subject. “Can I ask you something?”

“I think you just did.”

“Another something.”

Wariness pervaded his voice. “What?”

“How did they come to take Lexie from you? You said they injected
you
through a free vaccination.”

“That’s not something I talk about.”
Ever,
his tone implied.

“Maybe you should.”

“Maybe you should mind your own business.”

“You
are
my business,” she bit out, exasperated.

“Why in the hell would you think that?”

It was now or never. She could spend the rest of her life wondering what would’ve happened if she’d been brave enough, or she could
be brave.

“Because I love you.” The words dropped into the silence like stones into a still pond.

“Love me?” He spat the two words as if they were poisoned meat. “You don’t have any idea who I am.”

Søren pushed her away and sprang to his feet. If the cabin were larger, surely he’d be pacing. Instead, he took a position at the window, shutting her out with a turn of his back. She’d expected as much.

“So tell me.”

“Obviously, sex was a bad idea,” he said, ignoring that. “You’re not sophisticated enough to separate physical pleasure from emotional attachment.”

“As if you are,” she returned. “You sniff my hair when you think I’m asleep. I sense you watching me all the time. You’re worried and committed to protecting me. Did you really think I hadn’t noticed? I’m clever, remember? Give me a column of numbers to add, and I’ll prove it.”

“I will not argue this with you.”

“Of course not. Anger is an emotion, too. And you’re not supposed to have any. You’re dead, after all. You died when you lost your little girl.”

He whirled on her then, eyes blazing feral silver. “Do not speak. Not one more word. You don’t understand. You can’t.”

Mia pushed to her feet as well, knowing that provoking him would be a calculated risk. He might not forgive her what came next. “No, I don’t, because I’ve never lost a child. I
have
lost my father, who loved me better than my mother, who insisted on custody out of spite. I know what it’s like to miss someone. I can’t know more because you won’t tell me. Because you’re just a sad shell of a man who eats and fucks. Right?”

A muscle ticked in his jaw. “Right.”

“Nothing matters more than repaying those who hurt you. So what does it matter if you leave me dying in your wake?” Push, push, push. With each word, she could see him teetering closer to the edge. Hating herself, Mia went on ruthlessly, “Someone like you doesn’t build. What good ever came of you? You only destroy: lives, dreams, hearts. You’re nothing but a human tsunami.”

She knew she was right by his stricken, furious look. Her acuity could be targeted elsewhere, not just on numbers, and now she’d drawn the poison of his silent self hate. Nothing he would ever speak aloud, and so she told it to him in all its darkness.

“Ah,” he said. “It appears you do know me. And what does that make you, Mia? That you could profess to love such a creature?”

“It makes me human.”

But he didn’t seem to hear her. “You want the truth?” At her nod, he smashed a kerosene lamp to the floor. “Fine, since you have no illusions to shatter. Out of pride, I suppose, I wanted to spare you this, but you see me clearer than I’d realized. I always knew you were too damned smart. They performed no experiments on Lexie.
I
did that to her.” In a flat voice, he related events that left Mia weak-kneed with regret.

No wonder. No wonder the guilt. No wonder he couldn’t stop. Deep down, he blamed himself, and suicide had already failed. Tears burned in her eyes, but she refused to let them fall. She would be stronger than that. She had to be, for his sake.

“Accidents happen,” she said quietly. “They happen to parents without any special ability. How do you know your gift had anything to do with it? Did she stop and look before she crossed the road?”

“She saw only me.”

“But if she had looked, perhaps she would’ve seen the car as well as the illusionary ice cream. I know you don’t have perfect control, but why in the world would you want to hide a car from her?”

“I don’t have anything to do with it. I can’t construct other people’s base expectations. I’ve simply learned to shift them to my advantage via my movements, behavior, and wardrobe. So if she expected the street to be clear and I was nearby, then that’s what she saw.”

Mia thought she might be getting somewhere. She couldn’t falter now, so she steeled herself to the misery that lay beneath his anger. “Why would she have any expectations at all regarding the road?”

His first hesitation. “I don’t know.”

“So you concede that she might’ve seen the car, if she had stopped to look. Søren, I’m so sorry for your loss, I am, but it doesn’t track logically that this same accident couldn’t have occurred to another family on your street. One bereft of weird abilities.

“It still would’ve been a tragedy, and my heart is broken on your behalf, but you must accept that you didn’t do this. You loved her. Thinking about how you’ve cared for her all these years, it makes me want to cry. And the way you adopted Beulah as your own? It reveals you. You’ve been walking a dark road alone for a long time, but you’re not a bad person. If anything, you feel too deeply.” She gave a watery smile, tears barely held at bay. “That’s a hell of a kryptonite for any superhero. No wonder you buried any sign of it under layers of ice.”

“Can we stop now?”
You’ve eviscerated me,
his eyes said.

“Sure. I can’t persuade you I’m right. But in time you may accept that I am.”

He grunted in answer.

Reluctantly, she let the matter drop. Silence, punctuated with remote birdsong, reigned in the cabin. They had been here for a couple of days, and the peace had seeped into her soul. She understood now why he loved this spot, but hiding wouldn’t make their problems go away. And sex was out of the question right now; she was lucky he hadn’t put her outside for the bears yet.

So she changed the subject. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad we’re safe. But I’m wondering what we can accomplish out here.”

“You’d be surprised.”

“Would I?”

“Does this mean I’m supposed to show you now?”

She wondered if it was too soon for a joke. “Well, I think I’ve seen everything else.”

“Are you saying you’re bored with . . . everything else?” In a few scant moments, Søren had lost his sharpness, his anger, everything that fueled him.

“No. Just eager to put this behind us. If we can.” Mia was none too sure.

“We will. Regardless of blame, I must finish what I’ve started, but I promise you will take no lasting harm from your time with me.”

Time, as in limited. Pain lodged inside her sternum. After what she’d done to him, doubtless she deserved it. To cover, she said, “That’s good to know. You had something to show me?”

 

 

Søren felt as
though she’d flayed him with her tongue.

God knew he should be furious. And he had been. But now he was something else, somewhere between bitterness and loss. The mood left a salty flavor on his tongue.

He escaped gratefully to the car, where he withdrew a case. The circular object inside he affixed to the roof and then made the necessary connections. Next, he fetched his laptop, which he connected to the device on the roof. The mountain air held a chill, so he slid into the passenger seat and ran the cable through the lowered window.

But instead of getting to work, he stared off into the trees. Pines marched in stately rows all around him; he could picture what they’d look like from the summit, though from right here, he saw only a green tangle. That seemed particularly apropos.