Taming the Fire (39 page)

The last time she'd been here, in his house, things had been so different. Wonderful and gentle. And now they were back to this—the violence. The pain. “Please, just go,” he begged her, because he knew if she stayed, things would get much worse.

He only had so much control and he knew from experience that so did she.

“You can't block me out—not after all we've been through. I gave you a second chance when you betrayed me.”

“I never betrayed you, Rik. I saved your goddamned life,” he said with a quiet but deadly edge to his voice that he hadn't heard himself use in a long time. Not since his days as an MP, when he was letting an inmate know they'd fucked with the wrong guard.

She noted the tone, he could tell, but she didn't back down. “I'm not leaving, Trance, not with things between us the way they are. That's not fair to do to me.”

“Fair? Not fair to you?” He grabbed her, swung her inside easily and brought her down to the carpeted floor. “Is this what you want—to provoke me? Because I don't fucking think that's such a good idea.”

Rik struggled for a second and then stopped. “If this is the way I can get you to listen—”

“You want me to listen?” he roared, the anger that he'd been holding deep down coming out fast and hard and nearly uncontrollable. The anger he'd worried about when he'd walked away from her the other day. “I've already listened.”

“You're upset with me, I know that—”

“You don't know anything.” He pushed himself off of her, leaving her sprawled on the floor. He'd wondered if the wolf would emerge when he was holding her down, pinning her to the floor with his full strength. Before this, since they'd been together in his bed, he'd stopped worrying that the wolf could come out to get him.

She wasn't angry, didn't seem scared of his strength. She was sad, so freakin' sad. But that wasn't his responsibility anymore.

And she shoved to her feet, slammed against his chest with both palms, hard. He didn't budge, didn't move until she did it over and over again, until he grabbed her. He pulled her close to him, held her steady even as she squirmed and struggled. “You don't know who you're messing with, Rik. You've only seen me one way—you don't get it.”

“So what are you saying? That you're pissed enough to hurt me?” She snorted. “You could never hurt me. You're not capable of it.”

“You want to see what I'm capable of? Really?” Fury shot through him, days of anger built up, and before she could answer, he yanked her along, dragging her down the dark basement stairs to his dungeon. The one that hadn't been used in years. Hadn't even been seen in years.

He shoved her into the center of the room, crossed to the wall, locked the chains around his ankles. “Do your best.”

She blinked. “My best what?”

“I want you to bind me so hard and tight you don't think I could ever possibly escape.”

“Trance—”

“Do it!” he roared.

With a curse, she obeyed. She fitted him with a leather harness that wrapped around his throat, stretched his arms behind his back, then forced him to lie on the floor as his legs were pulled painfully up behind him. In this position, the limbs had no leverage, and no normal person could possibly break free. Especially not with the way Rik's practiced touch bound him tight.

“More,” he said, and though she sighed, she fastened more chains and cuffs to his wrists and ankles.

“Now back away.”

Something in his voice must've told her to comply, even though she was the unchained one. The one in control.

Straining, he stretched his muscles, his joints. She'd bound him well, and this was going to be a challenge… for about five seconds. As his muscles screamed with heat and strain, he yanked his arms apart, snapping the leather holding his wrists behind him. His legs popped free a second later. With one easy movement, the chain pulled from the wall, cracking the concrete. The leather strap on the second one pulled apart like taffy. The cuffs that held him to the floor were cake for him—steel, double reinforced, buried in concrete, and those came up along with the spikes from the ground.

He picked up the St. Andrew's Cross with one hand and smashed it against the wall in a million pieces.

And he hadn't even broken a sweat.

“Stop it, Trance!” Rik grabbed his arm and yanked him around, her eyes sparking with anger. “All this does is prove that you're strong. Stronger than I thought, but still… So you can tear up your furniture. Big deal. You won't hurt me.” Her eyes narrowed at him. “Or is it someone else you want to hurt? Do you want to hurt the beast? Is that who you want? The one who finished killing your father after I started? You going to hurt her? Take out on her your anger for your father never being around? Because
we
didn't take your father from you, Trance. Your own father did that, and maybe it's time you got that through your thick head.”

“Get out,” he rasped, pulling out of her grip so hard and fast she left scratch marks on his forearm. “Get out before I do something we both regret.”

“You already have,” she said softly. “You already have.” With that, she fled.

A
COUPLE
of hours after Rik left, Trance was still on the floor of the basement dungeon, staring at the mess around him.

“Trance?”

He looked up to find Wyatt at the bottom of the stairs, staring at him. Wyatt gave a long whistle as he looked around the room and then again at Trance. “Orgy gone wild?”

Trance groaned. “Is there a fucking sign on my door that says ‘Bother Me Now’?”

He stood and walked past Wyatt up the stairs, without inviting Wyatt to follow, knowing that wouldn't stop the man. He ended up on the couch, feet up and eyes closed, and Wyatt joined him.

“Drinking a little, huh?” Wyatt commented. Trance opened his eyes to see Wyatt staring at the collection of bottles strewn around the coffee table.

“Yeah, well, I'm trying to erase images of Ryan fucking from my mind,” he said, because it was easier than mentioning what had happened with Rik. Wyatt raised his eyebrows. “Forget I said that. Jesus, forget I said that.”

“I'll try.” The dark-haired man stared up at the ceiling. “Ender wants to kill you.”

“I figured. What, are you here to protect me?”

“No, I'm here to talk to you—about Rik.”

“Now, that doesn't make any sense at all. You hate her.”

“I don't hate her. I hate what her wolf did.” Even now, Wyatt growled at the mention of what had happened to Faith and the baby.

Trance let out a long breath. “Right now, I can't separate the two. I don't know if I'll ever be able to do that.”

“You love her.”

Trance bristled, hating this conversation. “And how do you know that?”

“I'd never stand in a cage with a woman who was wired to explode if I didn't. But I guess that's just me.”

Cursing, Trance kicked half the beer bottles to the floor—they fell with a satisfying crash and he turned the entire table over, just for good measure. Of course, it went farther than he'd meant it to, flying into the front wall and causing a nice big hole. But still he didn't say anything, and Wyatt continued. “She took someone from you—I get that. But you were the one who talked me into saving Rik's life when I would have much rather blown her to hell for what her wolf did to my family.”

“You only had to free her, you didn't have to love her,” Trance said quietly.

“That's true. But she wouldn't do anything like that now—you said so yourself. She was being tortured then. And as much as I wanted to hold her accountable for that… I couldn't. Neither could Faith.”

Trance scrubbed his face with his palms. “I appreciate what you're trying to do—”

“You might be throwing away the best thing that ever happened to you,” Wyatt interrupted.

“You don't know any fucking thing about it, Wyatt. Devlin lied to me. Kept things from me and then sent me out to—” No, Dev hadn't sent him out to fall in love. Trance had done that all on his own. And now he couldn't even bring himself to sleep in his own bedroom because the memories of having Rik up there—having her, over and over again—came back too strong. His sheets still held her scent.

The woods were off-limits too. At this point, he'd need blinders to walk through the ACRO compound. “She was just here.”

“Ah, that explains the mess in the basement.”

“There's no way it can work, Wyatt.”

“Faith is thinking about forgiving her,” Wyatt said. “I mean, she is forgiving Rik. She wants to tell her in person. Meet her face-to-face.”

“That's some brave shit.” Trance stared at his hands. Forgiveness from Faith would mean so much to Rik and he wondered if Faith would actually go through with it.

“Faith says life's too short to hate.”

“What about you?”

“It's hard. I'm not there yet. But we're going to have to work with her, whether or not she stays here or goes to England.”

“England?”

“Yeah. I'm supposed to talk to you about that. Dev wants to know… he wants to know what you want to do about Rik.”

“What do you mean, what do I want to do?”

“You were here first. She committed a crime against ACRO.”

“I promised her she would never be punished for anything she did for Itor while she's under ACRO's care.”

“But Dev doesn't have to keep her here. She could work out of the British office. Be kept away from you.”

Kept isolated. “I can't do that to her. I might not be able to forgive her, but I'd never forgive myself if she didn't get the full benefits of working here. Of being able to heal.”

Wyatt stood, readied to leave. “You love her, man. The sooner you admit it, the sooner you can get past all this garbage.”

Coco was so predictable. She was on her computer twenty-four seven, and Ryan had used his own laptop to attempt an IM connection with her. She hadn't replied once, and yesterday she'd finally turned off her IM program, but by then it was too late. A couple of ACRO computers had been designed specifically for his skills—they grabbed a connection with a computer through any IM software, and as long as Coco had her computer on and was touching it, and Ryan was touching his, he could see through her eyes.

And her eyes had been looking at some guy. In a bedroom. The guy looked angry, and then Coco was shaking her head. She grabbed her laptop and walked through a screened door to a patio overlooking a beach. A moment later, the guy was there again, still appearing pretty pissed.

Looked like they were in Florida, which was where her plane had landed.

After Ryan discovered she'd left ACRO, he'd gone straight to Flight Ops at ACRO's airport, where the person in charge had given him information about recently filed flight plans. Since the private jet Meg had boarded was not an ACRO plane on a mission, the flight plan had not been considered classified. Even if it had, Ryan had ways of accessing the information.

Thankfully, he hadn't had to use them, because Dev would have kicked his ass.

He was going to kick Ryan's ass anyway, because Ryan had taken off without permission, boarded a commercial jet and was now driving to the private airport where Coco had landed. Yup, he was in a shitload of trouble.

It would all be worth it, though, if Meg forgave him for being such an ass.

Fortunately, between ACRO's resources and his electrokinesis, he'd been able to figure out approximately where Meg was staying. Problem was, from even the very little he'd seen, he'd been able to tell that the house was no ordinary dwelling. Not with the six-foot walls, electrified gate and armed guards.

Getting to Meg was going to be a trick.

Good thing ACRO's training was top-notch, because he'd really hate to die before he got a chance to tell Meg he wanted her.

M
EG LOOKED UP
from her computer to see Ryan standing about ten feet from her poolside.

It was apparent, however, that Ryan was too busy looking at her to notice the five armed security men who now stood in formation behind him, ready to take him down at a moment's notice.

“I should let them shoot you, you know,” she called to him casually, even though she felt anything but.

Ryan stiffened, put his hands in the air and turned his head slowly to see the firing squad for himself. “Could you tell them I'm not here to hurt you?” he asked over his shoulder.