“And your mother?”
“Rhodes told me when I was eighteen that a year later, she’d joined a group of so-called Institutional Freedom Fighters and tried to burn down Safe Dawn to retrieve us. They were caught, of course. It’s stupid to try to take down the institutions; they have a permanent staff that can see the future before it happens. She was shot and killed in the process.”
“But she did try to save you.” That had to count for something, didn’t it?
Addison had fallen so fast for Spencer. How was it possible that she already wanted to ease his pain?
“Too little, too late. Four years later, Roman was taken away again to be made a Fury. I have no idea what his life has been like since he left Safe Dawn. He pops in and out periodically, but we don’t spend time together. He blames me for us getting caught. I guess I cried a lot in the warehouse, and there was that whole bit about my not being able to hide the freak in me to begin with.”
“He keeps trying to help us.”
“Which worries me a great deal.” He ran a hand through his hair and smiled before he reached out to touch her cheek. “I know one thing. I need to talk to Rhodes. He has some stuff to answer for. Tomorrow, I have to go back to Safe Dawn. I’m going to need you to take me back.”
“Will they let you out again?”
“Jeremy hasn’t been found yet, so yes. We’re going to have to find a way to beat Priscilla. She’s about the only person on the planet who could block me now from finding Jeremy’s energy path, but she can do it. If she’s alive, I’m going to need help I can only get in Safe Dawn.”
“I’ll go with you.”
He shook his head. “No, it’s not safe for you there. If anyone there finds out what you can do…”
“You’ll keep me safe.”
“I just told you about my mother. From day one, I’ve been letting women down. Why do you think you can count on me?”
“I don’t think it, I know it. Like your brother, I sometimes just know things, remember?”
“All right, but you have to promise me something.”
Anything. “What?”
“When the time comes, you’ll let me protect you from the Fury. You won’t let yourself be taken in.”
“I won’t let you do anything to put yourself in danger, not on my behalf.”
“Damn it, Addison.” He hit the wall next to them, and the mirror with the crown molding shook.
“But I promise to do my best not to get taken in.” It was the best she could do.
It would have to be enough.
Thirteen
Spencer gripped the side of the car as Addison zoomed down the highway at top speed in her red two-door sports car—the only color a real sports car should be, she had informed him.
They’d left at dawn to avoid giving explanations to either her grandfather or the staff. It hadn’t mattered that it had been so early; after his adventure in dark space, the encounter with Roman, Priscilla’s faked death, and Rhodes’ dealings with the Fury, Spencer had been too wound up to sleep.
The only thing that could have made him feel better had been sleeping down the hall. She’d been curled up in a ball with her blonde hair falling over her face and covering her pillow. So what that he’d crept down the hall to check on her long after he should have been asleep? He still wasn’t going to pursue a sexual relationship with her, no matter how much he wanted to, no matter how much his body begged to be close to her.
She was a complicated woman, they lived in complicated times, and his life was a mess. It was not the time to get involved. If only he could convince himself he wasn’t already involved. That was trickier.
“Do you always drive this fast?”
She laughed. “I thought you liked cars.”
“I do. I read car magazines all the time. But I have to say, Addison, I never thought I’d be in one with you driving.”
Rolling her eyes, she grinned, and his heart lurched. “That’s sexist, Spence. I am as capable of handling this car as anyone.” Giving him a sideways glance, she slowed down and came to a fast stop at the side of the highway.
“What are you doing?” Had she seen something? Was there something wrong with the car?
“Get out. Trade places with me.”
He narrowed his gaze. “What are you playing at here?”
“I’m going to let you drive.”
He leaned back in his seat. It wasn’t nice to offer somebody something you knew they couldn’t have. In fact, it was downright cruel. “You know that’s illegal.”
She shrugged. “Who has to know?”
“I’m always being monitored.”
“By Roman. Do you think Roman is going to pull us over and demand you go back to the institution? Hell, we’re going back to the institution right now.”
His gut response was to remind her that Priscilla had been killed for breaking a rule, but then he closed his mouth. The woman he’d known—his friend and former lover—wasn’t dead, she’d faked it. And he was going to wring her neck when he found her.
He pushed open the door and stepped out onto the shoulder of the highway.
Only a few cars traveled past them. He looked up at the horizon as the red glow of the rising sun illuminated the top of their vehicle. Addison stepped out of the car, slamming the door. She’d placed her hair in a braid, and it was the first time he’d ever gotten a good look at her without her blonde locks seeming to take on a life of their own around her face.
With her hair pulled back, her high cheekbones gave the top half of her face angular definition. The women in Hollywood paid thousands of dollars for such reconstruction, but he would bet Addison had never seen the inside of a plastic surgeon’s office. Completely makeup free, she looked young and fresh, like the first day of spring. In the sunrise, she was perfection personified.
Before he could think better of them, words poured from his mouth almost of their own accord.
“Addison, I told Roman that you’re too good to be my girlfriend.”
She nodded, and her eyes flared for a moment. “I know, you said it twice.”
“I meant it. I’m a doomed man. If it’s not this case, it’ll be another one, but sooner or later, I’m dead. I’ll be buried in an unmarked grave and forgotten like I never existed, and I’ll very likely burn in the pit of Hell forever.”
The blonde angel in front of him pounded her fist on top of her incredibly expensive car. He jumped. “What kind of religion did they drill into you guys in the institution?”
“Not much of one at all, just a constant reminder of why we’re locked in there to begin with.”
Emotion written on her face, Addison placed a hand over her heart. “Am I doomed, then? If I step out into the line of traffic behind me and die thirty seconds from now, am I heading downstairs instead of up?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“When you first met me, you didn’t know I was Conditioned. You didn’t like me, but you didn’t automatically assume I was Hell-bound. Now you know, is that where I’m going?”
“If it isn’t true, then how am I supposed to live with having been basically locked up for the last twenty-six years? That’s your entire life.” He really needed to shut up. Why was he putting this on her? What had happened in his life was not her fault.
“That was man-made, Spence.” She shook her head. “Now get in the car. I’m teaching you to drive.”
“I’m not done.”
Addison looked up at the sky for a moment before she met his stare again.
“You’re not?”
“No.” He extended his hand toward her. “You want me to drive this car. It’s like a dream come true to me, but that’s dangerous. Don’t you understand? You’re offering me things I can’t have. Two seconds later, there are going to be other things I want that I can’t have.”
Her eyes were huge. “What? What things?”
“Damn it, Addison, how dense are you? I’m talking about you, for God’s sake, about wan
ting you.”
“You can have me, Spencer. I’m not off limits.”
“No.” He kicked a tire. “I can’t.”
“Hey, watch the car.”
“You pounded on it.”
“It’s my car.”
The haughty expression on her face did strange things to his insides. How was it that he was most turned on by Addison when she was acting like a superior Wade? No, he corrected himself, it was part of the problem. There was never a time when he wasn’t sexually attracted to her. That was the issue. If he was still as enamored as a ten-year-old schoolboy when she acted like a bitch, then he was well and truly in over his head with the woman.
“Fine.” He wanted to stomp his foot on the ground, but that had never gotten him what he wanted, not even as a child in the institution. “I can’t have you, because it could never just be a one-time thing, and that’s all I’m good for. Even with Priscilla, who I thought was my best friend, I had to get out of there as fast as I could when it was over. Somehow, with you, it could never be just once between us. That’s the reason it can’t be.”
She cocked her head to the side. “You slept with Priscilla?”
That was the part of the conversation she wanted to focus on?
“A long time ago.”
“I see.”
“Oh no, no.” He shook his head and pointed at her. “You can’t be mad at me for something I did long before I ever met you, especially because we aren’t together, for the reasons I just explained.”
“So what you’re saying is, that we can’t be together because you’re afraid you’ll want more than just one time with me.”
The sounds of traffic increased, and he noticed the sun was fully over the horizon. He shivered and realized that it was cold outside. He was dressed in a jacket, but Addison wore only a long-sleeved shirt. Why could the woman never dress herself properly? He pulled his coat off and handed it to her over the top of the car, gratified when she took it without complaint.
“Who said I was afraid?”
“I think for such a tough man you’re afraid of a lot of things.”
“Watch it.” He didn’t like where this conversation was headed. “Don’t presume to know me after so little time.”
“Oh, I do know you. You’re the man who can go fearlessly into dark space, knowing he might never come back, but you won’t start a relationship because you might feel too much. You won’t drive a car because it will remind you of what you don’t have. Well congratulations, bucko, if you never do it, you’ll never know what you’re missing. Seems pretty ridiculous to me.”
Addison had delivered that whole speech to him without once raising her voice. William Rhodes couldn’t have dressed him down better. How had he let this woman get under his skin so easily?
“Give me the keys.” He held out his hand, and she threw them to him. Her aim wasn’t good, and they fell on the ground just to the left of him. He bent over to retrieve them, and as he stood, he got a glimpse of her shapely legs covered with too-thin-for-the-cold-weather gray slacks as she walked by him to the passenger seat.
If he ever got the chance, he would see to it that she stopped wearing such bland colors. They were her camouflage, her hiding place, and whatever she said about his fears, the woman clearly had some of her own. He’d give her credit, however, as she had gone walking into the lion’s den by going to Safe Dawn and risking exposure. That took a lot of guts.
He climbed into the car, closing the door with a thud. She stared at him from her side of the car and smiled when he looked into her eyes. His heart thudded loudly in his ears as he turned his attention back to the task at hand. Sticking the key in the ignition, he listened to the extremely well-built piece of Italian machinery purr.
Suddenly he was more than a little anxious. “Maybe you should teach me to drive in something less expensive. I don’t suppose you Wades keep any old dingy pickup trucks in the back of your penthouse apartment?”
“Sorry, can’t say that we do.” She reached out and grabbed his arm, patting it twice. “Besides, if this is going to be your only chance at driving, you might as well make it exceptional, don’t you think?”
He could see her logic. Still, he wasn’t sure he wanted to destroy her car.
“Think of it this way.” Her voice held the lightness of humor. “It’s my grandfather’s money you’ll be wasting if you screw up.”
He laughed out loud, couldn’t help himself, and tried to ignore the budding sadness that formed as he realized that as soon as he found Jeremy, they wouldn’t be laughing together anymore.
“Now, actually, this is the perfect situation to learn to drive stick-shift, because we’re going to be going straight and maintaining a speed. Stopping and going is much more difficult.”
He nodded. “Right.”
His palms had begun to sweat. If his nervousness destroyed the leather covering on the gearshift, he figured she could afford to replace it. Most likely it was the cheapest thing in the car.
“The clutch pedal is located on the far left, and you’re going to use it when shifting from one gear to another.”
“Right.” He did know the basics of cars, having avidly read car magazines since he was sixteen. It might not make sense—he’d never own a car—but he was male, and sometimes certain things just felt encoded in his DNA. Knowledge about cars seemed to be one of them.
“In this car, neutral isn’t a gear. It’s technically, if you want to be particular about it, the absence of a gear.”
“So nothing would happen if I raced the engine while I was in neutral.”
“Rev is the word I think you want to use. If you revved the engine.”
He grinned. They hadn’t done anything yet but this was actually kind of fun. “I feel a little bit like you’re my mom teaching me how to drive.”
The look she shot him was not one of amusement. “If this is going to make you think of me as your mom, I’ll stop instructing you right now.”
“Hell, Addison, when you get that snooty, uppity tone, I just want to push you down on the seat and do you until you can’t breathe.”
Her blue eyes got huge, and her cheeks turned pink.
“Is that better?”
She pulled her collar away from her neck a little. “Much. But if you want to do that, why can’t we…?”
Because it would destroy me, leave me shattered, and I might not be able to recover. I might end up one of those poor souls in the institution who thought it was better to end their own life than live another day inside the walls.
“Because we can’t, end of discussion.”
It was so damn unfair. He had this gorgeous, talented, sweet woman coming on to him, and he had to say no. Maybe he needed to have one of the doctors at the institution examine his head to make sure it was actually screwed on correctly.
She sighed. “Okay, back to our lesson, then. If we were driving around town, I would want you to keep the car in second gear, but since we’re on mostly open highway, you’re going to be driving in third, fourth or fifth gear.”
The whole thing was starting to feel like a lot of fun. He put his hand on the gearshift and she placed hers over it. “Let me show you.”
With her hand over his, she showed him how to shift from one gear to another. He pulled and she guided his movements. He tried to concentrate on what she taught him, which proved to be more challenging than he’d imagined. All he could think about was the other part of his body he wished she had her hand pulling on.
He gulped. “Okay. I think I’ve got it.”
“All right, let’s give it a try.”
Maybe it was the years of reading about the experience or maybe he was just a natural at it, but it only took him a few minutes to get the hang of manipulating the car. Before he knew it, he was burning rubber on the open highway, shifting gears and picking up speed.
The car glided beneath him, floated on the road, and the louder the roar of the engine, the more thrilled he got. Addison stayed
silent, and he wondered if she understood just how pivotal a moment he was having. This had been a lifelong dream, and even though he’d tried to deny himself the experience, she hadn’t let him. She’d been right.
Pointing to the left, she indicated the sign that said they were getting to the exit for Safe Dawn. He turned the car onto the exit, and for a moment, he fiddled with the gearshift. The car groaned, and he grimaced at the sound. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Addison grip the side of the car. Evidently, she hadn’t liked that noise either, despite her earlier protests about not caring what happened to the car.
The institution was only five miles off the interstate—the thinking at the time of its conception being that runaways would be easier to spot on the highways than lost in the backwoods. However, the terrain leading up to the building was desolate. With the exception of one lone gas station and a convenience store where he knew the guards bought lottery tickets and cigarettes, there was nothing built around Safe Dawn.
In retrospect, that had probably been a good call. There were people within its walls who could blow things up if left unchecked. Even Spencer knew that was a bad idea, and he was actually locked up with the human explosive devices.
“Turn right.”
He shook his head to disagree with her.
“We’re not going in the front door?”
Addison chewed on her lower lip, and he wished he could reach out and plant a soft, adoring kiss on it. Instead, he explained what was on his mind.
“I can’t take you in the front door. Rhodes would never allow you inside the walls. The best we could hope for would be the front offices where you and I met the first time. I actually need to introduce you to people the outside world doesn’t know exist.”
“There are people in there that the committee doesn’t know exist?”
“I’m sure your grandfather knows about them. I’m talking about the general public. They’ll never be allowed out, so unless Rhodes loses control of the place, they’ll live and die without anyone outside those walls knowing anything about them.”
Illicit Senses (Illicit Minds Book 1) Page 14