She swung around to face him, and he shoved both hands through his hair and winced when he inadvertently touched the long, deep, carved-out groove in his skull. “Damn it, Zyah, I don’t know, I just have to think. I can do that on my bike.”
“Fine. Then I’m going with you.”
He took an aggressive step toward her, hooked her around the nape of her neck and used his thumb to press into her jaw, forcing her face upward. “We get on that machine together, and when we get off, I swear I’m going to fuck your brains out and you’re going to let me.”
“Fine, then. Let’s do it. It’s just sex. I can do just sex.” She shoved at the wall of his chest without rocking him, turned and flounced up the stairs.
It was breathtaking, watching her walk away from him. The way her jeans clung to her hips and hugged her bottom. He was a damn fool to even consider putting her ass on the back of his bike. He’d made up his mind that he wasn’t going to have anything to do with her, not after their last insanity in her bed, but he had to have her. And it was never just sex.
He’d been the one to push her away, over and over. She had tried to connect with him, but he’d been ashamed for her to see his past. He didn’t want her to know about the many kills he’d made. She’d been so far into his mind, he was certain he hadn’t managed to protect her from those things anyway. She’d been the one accepting and forgiving. Nonjudgmental. He’d been the one pushing her away, over and over.
He turned away from the stairs and picked up his jacket from the sideboard, shrugging into it. Anat had made some damn good points. Really damn good points. What was the standard he was judging himself by? His talent? It wasn’t a talent, it was a fuckin’ curse. Everyone else in his club had a psychic talent that contributed in a big way to their survival. He didn’t. A couple of times, his talent had pulled them out of the fire, but then he’d nearly killed them all.
Building illusions and using them had been a disaster until he’d learned how to control that power. He’d kept quiet at first, afraid he was going insane, figuring he was useless when they had been children fighting for survival. He still felt that way. He glanced toward the stairs. Most people, if they did have psychic talents as Czar believed, never developed them. They still went after what they wanted. They still fought for happiness. He had one chance, and that one chance was that woman up those stairs.
Was he using his past as an excuse because he was afraid of failing with Zyah? Afraid of letting her down? Or was he afraid of failing himself? Being the one in the club who couldn’t cut it yet again? Was Anat right? He had to take a good, hard look at himself. He never ducked a tough assignment. Never. He pulled his weight when it came to any kind of dangerous assignment. Hell no, he wasn’t a coward.
Damn it all. Maybe when it came to personal shit he was. He never talked about his cursed gift to the others. Not even to Czar. He’d never admitted to them that illusion turned to ugly reality, and reality could kill. He was always afraid of being rejected by the others. Was that what he was doing to Zyah? Rejecting her before she could refuse him?
What was he doing standing there in the Gamal household with his colors inked on his skin, feeling them all the way to his bones, when he hadn’t gone to Czar and told him the truth? Laid it right out in front of him. All of it. The White Rabbit with that pocket watch who persisted in turning into Sorbacov with his fucking gold watch. The ticking time bomb that was so real even Maestro and Anat heard it. They heard it. If Zyah hadn’t stopped it by kissing him, connecting them so deeply, that bomb could have gone off.
He cursed under his breath in his native language. Anat was right. He was a fucking coward. Now not only could he lose his standing with the only family he’d ever known, but he could lose Zyah. Really lose her, as in she could be dead. He couldn’t take that. He wouldn’t be responsible for that. He needed time to think things through. He had to make certain she was safe, but also that his family was safe. The ocean air would help. The open road and his bike would clear his mind. They had to. He couldn’t make mistakes, not when lives were at stake.
Player felt Zyah’s presence before she even appeared on the staircase. He turned slowly to look up to watch her descend. It was almost a compulsion. A need just to be in the room with her. To breathe her in, to see her like this, doing mundane, simple, everyday things. She flowed in silence down the stairs like the dancer she was, so gorgeous she took his breath away. Her beauty wasn’t just skin deep.
He didn’t think she was perfect for him because he found her curvy body sinful beyond temptation, a playground he could spend hours teasing and playing with, or even because she had a gift that could counter the mess of his own talent. She was unique. A soft-spoken woman unafraid of hard work, capable of unconditional love and loyal to a fault. She was worth fighting for, and he’d be a damn fool to let her slip away because he was afraid of failure.
She didn’t smile at him when he reached out and pulled her close, standing her in front of him to inspect her gear. She wore a thick jacket and good gloves. She’d managed to tame her hair enough to twist it into a long, loose braid that was never going to hold with that thick mass, but with a helmet over it, she’d do fine. Bog, but she was drop-dead gorgeous.
A little half smile played around her full lips. She shook her head. “I am not. There’re all kinds of things wrong with me.”
“Did I say that out loud?” He probably had. Half the time he didn’t know what the fuck he was doing around her. He caught the front of her jacket and tugged until she took a step closer to him. “You absolutely are. Believe me, I know what I’m talking about.” He said that with all sincerity. “Are you dressed in layers under the jacket? It’s going to be cold out there this time of night.”
Her dark chocolate gaze slid over him, hot enough to melt a glacier. She was going to give him a heart attack for sure. He pressed the heel of his hand to his temple. It was hurting like a mother again. Pounding. When was it ever going to stop for good?
The only time his headache let up anymore was when Zyah was talking softly to him, usually in the middle of the night when he couldn’t sleep because his damn head was going to explode and the ticking of the bomb was so loud the entire household could hear it. She would come and lie down on the bed beside him, take his hand and just talk to him.
“Stop thinking about it. You’ll make it happen. I can already feel the illusion building. We’re going for a ride on your motorcycle, and if you can’t handle that, we’ll walk outside for a while in the open air,” Zyah declared.
“I’m sorry I’m putting you in such a bad position,” he said, meaning it. Not meaning it. Rethinking his decision to leave. To give her up. He wasn’t a coward. Her grandmother had given him a lot to think about. “I know every time you have to find the scattered pieces of my brain and glue them back together, it connects us more.” He felt every single one of those ties binding them closer and closer.
Pulling on his gloves, he led the way outside and took his first real lungful of fresh night ocean air. He loved the sea. Living by it. The way it thundered at times, the waves racing toward the cliffs, spraying white water high into the air in sheer defiance of holding back. Water couldn’t be held back. You could try, but it would always find a way to escape. He wanted that. Just to go out peacefully. Smoothly. A rhythm, because he loved that beat, but he’d just drift like that tide out there.
“Stop, Player. What is wrong with you tonight?” Zyah all but stomped her foot. “What happened tonight before I got home to put you in such a melancholy mood?” She caught at his arm and tugged at him until he stopped walking, pulling his gaze away from the ocean and back to her perfect, furious face. Her beauty caught at him every time.
“It’s my head, Zyah, it just keeps coming apart no matter how many times you put it back together. I have this weird affiliation with Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and I can accept that. I was reading that story when I was
a little kid. We were starving. Freezing. I was fucked up. I’m not going to lie, you’ve seen enough of my memories to know what happened to me.”
He shoved his hands in his jacket pockets and turned away from her, looking out to sea at the angry waves. Now he wanted to feel each of those waves pounding the bluffs, hammering at them the way he wanted to slam his fists into his enemies.
From her front yard, Anat’s Victorian house faced several other homes, but her backyard had only a street between it and a very long strip of headlands. She had a gorgeous view. That piece of real estate was worth a fortune, which made it look as if she were very wealthy and probably brought her to the attention of the gang of thieves still looking to get something valuable they thought she had.
Zyah stepped close to him, so close he could feel her body heat and smell that fragrance that was unique to her alone. Her fingers slipped into the crook of his arm. She remained silent, allowing him to marshal his thoughts. He liked that about her. Their first night together, when they both had been so free with each other, talking and laughing as if they didn’t have a care in the world, she had done that as well, waiting for him to speak, listening attentively.
“Player, tell me about that first time with Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. I know you detest those characters coming to life. You did when the other children loved it so much, yet you created it for them. I watched your face. I know you hated it. Tell me why.”
They stood together in the dark, the roar of the sea traveling across the waving expanse of grass while he debated whether he was going to tell her the truth. She knew so much about him already, none of it good.
He shook his head. “I hate this, Zyah. I want so much for you to find something to like about me. The more you know, the more you’ll loathe.”
“That isn’t true. You’re in my head as much as I’m in yours, Player. You know I don’t loathe you, or even dislike you. If anything, I have to struggle all the time to try to distance myself from you because you’re the one holding back. You don’t want me, Player, and I don’t want to throw myself at you, but it’s damned hard when I’m so connected.”
She was so fucking honest with him. It was hard not to admire her. She was so much like her grandmother, and that was all good. And she came right out and called him on holding back.
“Don’t think for one moment I don’t want you, Zyah.” He knew by just looking at her she took his statement wrong—she thought he meant physically, but he was determined to tell her what she needed to hear. He also wasn’t certain what he was going to do about their relationship, so he didn’t try to explain to her what he really meant.
“Sorbacov was a man who never wanted to be the president. He liked being the power behind the throne. He enjoyed secrets and fear. He had so many secrets of his own. He had a perfect family. His wife and son. He didn’t like women. He much preferred young boys. Very young boys. He also got off on torture and watching rape. He was highly intelligent, so he rose fast in politics, chose the perfect wife and a candidate to back and then became a very powerful man. He was smart enough to bide his time and keep his deviant proclivities under wraps until he could let them loose, and even then, he was extremely careful to make certain no one would live to tell.”
Zyah started walking down the road, tugging on his arm, moving him around the bike. His head pounded like the waves battering at the bluffs. The road tilted a little toward the sea. The surf rose up, wild and calling to him. She didn’t rush him to get to the part about Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. She just let him talk. Start where he needed to. He appreciated that in her.
“Sorbacov established four schools to train assets, meaning orphans, children of the murdered political opponents. In some cases, as in mine, Sorbacov saw me and liked the way I looked and wanted me for himself. My father was in his army and had his own depravities. I didn’t find that out until much later. He sold me to Sorbacov. Sorbacov took me to the school. I was four.”
Her arm tightened around his waist. “Player.”
She said his name so softly, so intimately, he felt her in his mind, stroking him there. She made him feel as if he wasn’t so alone, the way he’d felt he’d been for so damn long.
“They say you really can’t remember anything that clearly at four, but I remember every detail. All of it. What we were all wearing. The weather. That watch of Sorbacov’s. He took it out and looked at it when they were beating my mother as if it was boring him. Her screams. The blood. He was annoyed when some of her blood splattered on his shoes.”
He tried to push the demons back, the ones escaping from the doors he kept closed and nailed shut in his mind. “I showed a unique ability for making bombs. It was insane, and no one could explain it. I tinkered with tools and could take apart and put things back together, and Sorbacov noticed. He brought in several instructors, and they would lay out simple bombs at first, little ones, and he would stand behind me while I put them together. I didn’t know what they were. It was fun. A puzzle.”
He stopped walking and faced her, looking down at her, pleading for understanding. “We were raped every day, repeatedly. Beaten. Not just with fists. Forced to perform all kinds of acts. To sit at a bench and put together a puzzle was a respite; it took my brain somewhere else, away from pain, away from something so horrific I could barely keep from going insane.”
Player had no idea why he expected Zyah’s dark eyes to hold censure, but he did. He felt guilty enough for both of them. He always would. Instead, those dark chocolate eyes of hers, so beautiful, held compassion for a little boy; not just the little boy but the fucked-up man as well. He didn’t deserve it, and she’d understand why in just a few more moments.
“Sorbacov was in a particularly sharing mood over the course of a week, and I was in a bad way. His friends weren’t gentle, so much so that he even made them stop a couple of times and I found myself feeling grateful to him.” He hated himself for that.
He stared at the crashing waves as they broke over the rocks just before they made it to the bluffs. He’d not had his fifth birthday, and he loathed himself for being grateful to Sorbacov, the man who’d had his mother beaten to death and who’d raped him and given him to his friends to rape, just because the man had told his friends to be more careful of him.
Player turned his face away from her, afraid that terrible burning sensation behind his eyes was something he would regret forever. “I was told to build a series of bombs over the next couple of weeks, and I was so happy. I could barely walk. Everything hurt, and I knew as long as I pleased him, built each one faster than the last, he wouldn’t give me to his friends, even if he used me himself, which he did, every time I finished one of the bombs.”
He swallowed down bile. “I made five bombs. He told me for my birthday, he was taking Czar and me to a party. It was a big deal. There was going to be all kinds of good food and cake and ice cream. I would just have to do a couple of things for him and then I could eat anything I wanted. I could even bring food home for the others.”
They began walking again in silence, Player threading his fingers through Zyah’s. He needed to feel close to her at least for these last few moments. They had crossed the street and were following the path that led through the grass of the headlands to the bluffs overlooking the ocean.
The sound of the sea rose up, and he realized he loved being close to it because it felt cleansing. The roar of the waves drowned out the voice of guilt in his head that told him he was never going to be good enough for the world Czar wanted them to fit into. He could never forgive himself for his sins, the sins he’d committed when he was five years old and kept committing for the sake of his own survival.
“I carried each of the bombs into the party wrapped like a gift and gave them to Czar. When all five were in, Sorbacov took me to a table and introduced me to a family. They were very nice. He said I was a friend of his family. He had told me to use my ma
nners and to say exactly what I was told: My name, Gedeon Lazaroff, which is my real name. That I was a friend of the family, a friend of his son, Uri. Czar joined us at that table, and if I started to say anything I wasn’t supposed to, he would grip my leg really hard.”
Player realized he’d never told Zyah his name. “I should have told you that the first time I met you, that my name is Gedeon Lazaroff. I did tell your grandmother. I think she knows all of our names, but before anyone else, you should have been told.”
She tilted her head up at him and smiled. Yeah. He should have told her. That meant something to her.
“Sorbacov sat at the table talking to the adults. There was a boy about twelve, and Czar talked with him, although I noticed Czar was quiet and kind of stilted. Mostly, he looked after me. I talked to the girl. She was eight or nine, and she had a book.” He took a deep breath. “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. It was the coolest book I’d ever seen. She showed me all the pictures and read some of it to me. Sorbacov had told them all it was my birthday, and she was very excited for me. I really liked her. Her name was Irina.”
He swallowed down bile again and stared at the white foam as it shot into the air. “Sorbacov got an urgent call, and we had to leave early. She gave me that book and wrote, ‘Happy birthday from Irina.’ I carried it out to the car. The driver pulled the car to the curb just up the block where we could still see the big hall. Sorbacov took out his pocket watch. I’ll never forget that. The way he smirked when he looked at that watch.”
His hand tightened around Zyah’s. Again, he stood silently, working up the courage, although she had to know the rest.
“The explosions rocked the ground and our car, the bombs going off almost simultaneously. Dirt and debris filled the air. Rubble, bricks and cement hit the ground. We could see the flames glowing orange and black, and Sorbacov had the driver go back. He was smiling so big. He got out and started laughing. He made Czar and me get out and walk up to the ruins. We could see some of the bodies. I could see Irina’s dress and part of her leg. Czar put his hand over my eyes and dragged me back to the car. He kept telling me not to cry. Over and over, he told me not to let Sorbacov see me cry.”
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