A hand under her chin turned her face toward the floor-length mirror that leaned against the wall. He was there, behind her. Nude, though her body blocked her full vision of him.
You are my woman, and I will not leave you in need. Give yourself to me and I will give myself to you.
He was gorgeous. Wild. Tall and broad-shouldered. His thick brown hair was in that man-bun he favored. He moved his arm around her waist and nuzzled her neck. Shivers rippled over her skin like an electrical frisson.
She stared at her reflection as she touched his forearm. She could even feel the coarse, dark hair under her palm as she stroked him. But all of that disappeared when she looked down at herself and saw her hand hovering over empty air.
Her gaze cut to his reflection. He closed his eyes as he pressed his face to the side of hers. He was a beautiful man, in the same way that a craggy cliff is beautiful, and he wasn’t in any way real.
I am not beautiful, he said—to her ears or through her mind, she didn’t know; it was all blending now.
You are to my soul, she answered. Truth, those words, but how had she found them? Something about Bastion stripped her to her essence.
He covered her eyes with his big hand, blocking her vision. Don’t look too closely. You’ll see knots of scars and the terrible things I’ve done that make me me.
I have scars too.
He kissed her temple. I know. But yours make you strong.
She pulled his phantom hand from her face. Bastion, what are we doing? She kissed his palm. His skin was warm against her lips. Her body quivered. How she needed him.
I will give you release. His hand trailed down her neck, down her chest to the buttons on her shirt. One opened, then the next.
She pulled her eyes from the image of him standing behind her in the mirror and watched as the third button released itself, controlled by some unseen force.
It was a cruel reminder that he wasn’t really there with her. She jerked herself away from him, backing up to the wall. Her eyes darted around the room, madly searching for him. How was this happening? How could she feel him if he wasn’t physically there?
She looked into the mirror, but it was now empty. She covered her eyes and slumped to the floor. What was she doing, indulging in this? Letting this being into her mind was potentially dangerous. What if he took over? What if he said and did everything he needed to in order to gain control over her?
What if he used her against the team?
She could feel Bastion’s soft efforts to reach her, but she blocked him from her mind. She couldn’t continue with this. She knew nothing about him.
And there it was, yet another reality-defying thought.
He wasn’t anything. He didn’t exist. He was merely a figment of her imagination. Maybe she never did actually see or touch him in the gym after Max’s wedding. Kelan and Greer never found evidence of him when they searched the house that night.
But if that was true, how had he turned on her light or unbuttoned her shirt? She hadn’t touched those things—had she? How was any of this happening? And why her? Was she the weakest link on the team? Had her loneliness been an open invitation to him?
She fisted her hands and squeezed her head, reminding herself that he wasn’t real. None of this was really happening. Someone was slipping her psychedelics. That had to be the answer. But who? The Omnis had used them on both Fee and Addy. Maybe Ace too.
But no Omnis were in the house.
Had she consumed something no one else had? She’d run errands today with Mandy. They’d stopped for lunch at Ivy’s diner. Maybe someone there had slipped her something. Maybe there were Omnis all over town.
God, she was so fucking paranoid. But why was she the only one this was happening to? Had to be because she was the weak link.
The Omnis had somehow hacked her.
She was so fucked. And because of her, so was the team.
She crossed her arms around her ribs, holding herself in a bruising grip as she fought the shaking that was overtaking her, an addict jonesing for a fix. She tried to steady her breathing, slow it—end it, even—but that only made the craving worse. There was one thing she could do to break herself out of this spiral.
She closed her eyes, feeling the darkness swallow her, starting with her feet, as it always did. She stamped them, trying to shove it back down. It wouldn’t go away. It slipped up her calves. She choked on a sob. She hadn’t let it get higher than her waist for a long, long time, but up, up it went, eating her, inches at a time.
“No, no. Nonononono—” she murmured, terrified of the numbness it brought.
Bastion’s astral body sat next to Selena as she kept herself folded tightly against the wall. Her face was flushed, her eyes wide and dark—not with passion but terror. This was his fault. He’d scared the hell out of her.
He tried to surround her energy with his, hoping to calm her rising panic, but it had no effect. He was about to hurry down from his attic retreat, but she got up and rushed into the bathroom. Was she ill?
She yanked drawers open and rifled through them, madly searching for something that she wasn’t finding. He stepped close to her, trying again to send her soothing energy.
She grabbed a travel kit and dumped its contents on the counter, then stared hard at the empty toiletries bag. Her breathing calmed. Maybe his energy surges were getting through to her. He was about to summon his astral body back to himself so that he could come down and be with her in person, when she reached into the bag and pulled something out.
He leaned over to see what it was. A box cutter. Why would she be so frantically searching for that? Or maybe that wasn’t what she’d been searching for at all. Dieu, he wished she hadn’t blocked him from her mind.
She set it down on the counter, staring at it as if she expected it to come alive. She backed away from it, never taking her eyes off it. Maybe it was what she’d been searching for. Why did it hold so much power over her?
She turned the shower on, still staring at the steel tool while steam began to spill over the top of the shower stall. After a minute, she tore her clothes off, stripping down to her bra and panties. Still she stared at the box cutter. She moved closer to the mirror now, then reached behind her to unhook her bra. As much as Bastion had yearned to see her nude body, this felt waaaay too close to voyeurism. He was just about to slip out of the bathroom, when Selena dropped her bra to the floor. Her breasts were luscious mounds with small, dark nipples. Even his astral body tightened in arousal—which in itself almost made him pop back into his physical body.
Selena cupped those gorgeous mounds and held one off to the side, looking at herself critically. And then he understood the connection between her panic, the box cutter, and her breasts. Judging from the messy crisscrossing of raised scars he saw, she was headed someplace dark.
Right now.
It would take him three minutes to rush down from the attic and get into her room, three minutes that would be too long to stop her from what she was about to do.
She made the same examination on the side of her other breast, which was similarly scarred. Bastion stepped behind her and caught her wrists in his astral hands. Don’t do this. I beg you. Don’t. Do. This. He was so panicked that he lost the ability to manipulate the physical world. She reached down and picked up the box cutter.
No. No. Selena. Please. I will do anything for you, anything, just stop this now. Tears slipped down his astral cheeks. He briefly wondered how that was possible without yanking him back into his body, but he pushed that question aside. Three minutes for him to get here. He couldn’t risk that delay when he might yet be able to stop this.
Selena stepped into the steaming shower, still wearing her panties. She adjusted the temperature of the water, then let it bead down over her open palm, where the box cutter sat.
She slowly slumped down, sitting so just her feet were in the water. Her hand tightened on the steel tool. Bastion sat in front of her, his astral legs bent on either side of hers. He trie
d to get a hold of her wrists again, but his phantasmal fingers just moved through her flesh.
Normally, he could still interact with physical material while in astral form, but not tonight. He was too panicked.
Please. Selena. Stop. Look at me. Look at me.
He pushed a compulsion at her, but it just slipped over her head, blocked by her powerful mind. He tried and tried to grab her hands, to block their upward movement.
And then the blade nicked her soft flesh, drawing a new, thin line through the mat of tangled white scars. She sucked in a sharp breath and her eyes rolled back as her eyelids lowered over them in painful, exquisite relief.
Bastion was instantly back in his body. The three-minute countdown began as he leaped down the attic stairs, slammed through the door to the hall, crossed the hall, mentally unlocked her door, then did the same with the bathroom door.
It took him two minutes.
She looked up at him, but her eyes were unfocused. He would wipe her memory of this whole event later. Now, he just put her in a trance as he stepped barefoot into the shower. The hot water pelted his bare back as he crouched in front of her. She’d made a second cut under the first. Neither was deep, but both flowed freely, the thick red of her blood thinning out from the water splashing off his shoulders.
Relaxed in the trance he’d imposed, Selena let her hands drop to her thighs. Bastion freed the box cutter from her grip and tossed it out the open shower door, where it skittered across the floor.
He caught her hands and kissed her knuckles. Why, Selena? Why? You could have come to me. I would help you—always.
Rape bait.
The term clearly came to him from her mind, but he didn’t understand its implications. His tears fell freely as he observed his woman, sitting in some hell her mind had conjured, bleeding, slumped against the side of the shower in the grips of his trance.
He shut the water off and stepped out of the stall to retrieve a washcloth. He blotted her cuts dry. Part of him wanted to reach out to Guerre so his friend could heal her, his light, but he didn’t, coward that he was. He still wasn’t ready to come clean with his team. Not yet. Not that they could undo what the Matchmaker had done. But they both needed time—her more than he. And if time was the only gift he could give her now, then he damned sure would.
Seeing that her wounds were superficial and had already stopped bleeding, Bastion finally drew a calming breath.
He carried her out of the bathroom, then set her on her bed and pulled the covers over her. He went back into the bathroom and fished through the drawers for a medical kit. From it, he took some gauze pads, tape, and antiseptic ointment.
Selena was still lying in the bed where he’d put her. He sat beside her and leaned over her to tend her wounds. This was not how he’d imagined first touching her breasts. He kept himself focused on the task at hand—getting her patched up quickly. When he finished that, he leaned back and studied her. The scars were on the sides of both breasts.
Mon amour, I need to see the rest of your wounds. Please stand for me.
It wasn’t fair, what he asked, taking from her rather than waiting for her to show him. He needed to know what he was dealing with—not that he had any idea how to help her heal, but at least foreknowledge would help him hide his shock when she did ultimately reveal herself to him.
Taking her hand, he helped her to her feet. The only thing she wore was a pair of beige boy briefs. Trimmed with elastic lace, they matched the bra she’d worn earlier.
He sat in front of her. He wanted to pull her body against his—as much to absorb the feel of her against himself as to reassure both of them that this would pass…whatever this was. He didn’t though. He knew this memory would return to her, as all those he’d hidden from her would one day. She might hate him for it later, but that wasn’t going to stop him from helping her now. He slipped his hands inside the waistband of her panties to push them down—but stopped when his fingertips encountered more spiderwebbing scars, on either hip. He squeezed his eyes shut and swallowed hard, afraid of what he would see when she was bared.
She obviously was aware that cutting herself wasn’t okay, because she’d picked places hidden from the eyes of others. Secret places, secret like her sexuality.
Motherfucking hell. What had happened to her?
When they’d stood and talked about scars, he’d been talking about the thin one on her face and the one on her hand. Not these.
He pushed her panties off, helping her step out of them. A white patch of thin, raised scars marred her hip. Her upper front thighs had no marks. He turned her around, terrified of what he would find, but the only other scars he found were the mirroring ones on her other hip.
Dieu, how he wished to hold her. But that wasn’t necessary to her care and wasn’t a privilege she’d granted him—yet. He tilted her head up. Her green eyes were open but unfocused, just the blank stare of a tranced regular. He bent close and whispered, “We will figure this out. Or, at least, I will stand beside you as you figure it out. You aren’t in this alone anymore, Selena. I am yours to command, to use, to hold, to consume.”
He lifted the covers and urged her to get into bed. He had a bathroom to straighten and a dry pair of jeans to change into before settling in bed with her. Tonight of all nights was not a good one for her to be alone.
When Selena woke the next morning, before moving, before even opening her eyes, she knew something was wrong. She took stock of herself and her situation. It was early yet—well before sunup. She was in her room, in her bed, wearing a T-shirt she usually reserved for working out in…and her underwear was missing.
She sat up fast and sent a look around her room, uncertain what—or whom—she was expecting to see. No, that wasn’t true. She was expecting him. Bastion.
She fisted the sides of her head as she tried to remember what had happened last night. Addy had had her bachelorette party. Bastion had spoken to her at the end of it, telepathically, summoning her up here.
Selena tried to clear the fuzz in her head, tried to remember details, but they kept just out of range, like a word you knew and used often but suddenly couldn’t remember. The harder she tried, the less she remembered.
The underwear she’d had on last night was on the floor beside her bed. She got up and grabbed it, surprised that it was wet. She looked over to the mirror. A memory flashed of her and a naked Bastion standing behind her.
As soon as it came, it left, leaving her dazed. Had it been a dream? Had he been here? Why couldn’t she remember what happened? There had only been the wives and girlfriends of the team at Addy’s party last night. No one would have slipped her a Mickey.
She went into her bathroom, trying to understand the confusion she felt. Something was sticking to the side of her breast. She pulled her shirt off and looked down to see a long, narrow bandage taped to her skin. Her lungs locked up. She couldn’t breathe—in or out. She stumbled over to the tub and sat on the edge.
This was bad.
She removed the bandage and looked at the thin scratches, recognizing them as something typical of her cuts. She’d done this to herself. No one else. But…had Bastion been there? Did he see her do this?
No one knew about her secret. She hadn’t even told Ace, and if anyone here would understand, it was Ace.
This was not good. She hadn’t cut herself in over a year. Until a few weeks ago, she thought she’d made progress away from using her go-to relief valve. Sure, she’d come close recently, but she hadn’t given in those times.
Selena stepped into the shower and turned the water on, letting it pelt her face and shoulders, then lifted her arm to rinse the thin red lines she’d cut across the snaggle of white scars.
She was clearly losing her mind. She wasn’t sure how much more she could take. If this were some fucked-up test Owen and Kit were running to build a psychological profile on her, then she didn’t want any part of what they were up to.
Selena went into the den. This was not a
good day to confront Owen. With his wedding just a few days away, he was wound tight…and shit always rolled downhill.
He looked up from where he was sitting at the desk. “Need something?”
“I need to talk to both you and Kit.”
“Can it wait until after the wedding? I have a stack of things I’m trying to wrap up before then.”
“No.”
Owen’s cold blue eyes studied hers, then he texted Kit. He leaned back in his seat, keeping his eyes on her while they waited for Kit to join them.
Selena closed the door when he did.
“’Sup, Owen?” Kit asked, his gaze moving between both of them.
Owen nodded toward her. “Selena’s show.”
“Just exactly what is it you guys are doing to me?” she asked. The question caught them off guard. Not the reaction she was expecting.
“‘Doing’ to you?” Kit asked.
“You’re making me lose my mind. Why?”
Kit and Owen exchanged confused glances. Owen got up from behind his desk and came around to lean on it. “Where’s this coming from, Sel?”
“Is it a test? Another qual I have to pass?” she asked.
Owen frowned. “I’m not following you.”
“I’m still active duty in the Red Team, here by arrangement with the Army. You’re paying my salary, Owen, but I’m not a permanent member of your team. I want to know—are you trying to find my breaking point to see if I’m worth bringing on board for good?”
Owen rubbed his forehead, buying a few seconds before answering. “First, I’m already working on your separation papers. Second, you have nothing to do to prove yourself worthy or capable. You did that when you saved Kit’s daughter. Third, I consider you a permanent member of my team. And fourth, what the actual fuck are you talking about?”
Tears watered Selena’s eyes. She almost wished it was some screwed-up test he wanted her to pass. She waved her hand. “All the crazy stuff that’s been happening.”
“Like?” Kit asked.
“Like the voices, and partial memories, and—”
Bastion: O-Men: Liege’s Legion Page 11