Strangers of the Night

by Megan Hart

  He couldn’t stop it, though. Pushing his cock inside her heat was better than anything he’d ever imagined possible. He pushed deeper, deeper, pleasure consuming him.

  In the way of dreams, some of the details were blurry. Her face, though. Her smile. Her body, welcoming him. All of that was clear as anything.

  He moved faster, and she moved with him. Everything around them faded away until it was only the two of them. Naked, skin on skin. Mouth on mouth. Heat and wetness and friction, building up and up until he couldn’t hold back anymore.

  He woke a second or so before his climax. Fingers clutching the sheets, body tense and straining, he gave up to the rush of pleasure. His cock was so hard it had slipped free of the waistband of his scrubs, and hot fluid spurted onto his belly in a series of forceful jets that left him spent and breathless.

  Let them watch, he thought, blinking at the ceiling. Let them get their jollies, if they did. Let them monitor him, make their reports.

  He was still alive, and his body was still his, no matter what they did to him. They couldn’t take that away. And they could never get inside his head.

  Chapter 14

  “We’ve arranged for you to switch shifts with the other nurse,” Vadim said via video call. “It seems she and her husband were the lucky winners of a weekend in the Poconos, and they haven’t had a real vacation in years. She was quite beside herself with excitement.”

  Samantha had come in from a run, still sweating, drinking from a tall bottle of fruit water. She tipped her chair back to eye the computer screen. “It’s happening? You have confirmation?”

  “Bentley cracked the encryption on the transfer orders. It’s going down tomorrow.”

  “And if it doesn’t? If it’s a decoy?” Samantha didn’t like the sound of this. Most of the work the Crew handled dealt with the research and occasional hunting of creatures. Sometimes hauntings. Not double agenting for secret private organizations determined to raise an army of telekinetic soldiers. She was confident in her skills, but it all still depended on accurate information.

  “Then we’ll arrange for you to switch shifts again.”

  She laughed at that with a shake of her head and swallowed another gulp of water before capping the bottle and setting it on the desk. She leaned forward, wrists on her knees, to look closer at the laptop screen. She swallowed again, this time against a slightly bitter aftertaste that didn’t come from the drink. “Do you know how they plan to do it?”

  “As the nurse on duty, you will be asked to give him an additional amount of sedatives in order to keep him calm when they come for him.” Vadim looked serious.

  “And I’ll palm it?”

  “No. You’ll have to give it to him, of course. He needs to be compliant when they take him out. No chance of him using any of his abilities, should they not have gone latent the way they believe. He’ll need to be controllable until you can get him to us, where we can keep him safe.”

  This didn’t sound right to her. “But if he knows I’m there to help him...”

  “He killed three men with nothing more than a twitch of his fingers, Samantha.”

  “Years ago,” she countered. “And I’m willing to bet they deserved it.”

  “We can’t risk him getting out of control. You could be hurt or even killed.”

  “He wouldn’t do anything to hurt me,” she said, thinking of all these last months, of the scent of lavender, the tickle of fingertips at the back of her neck. Of the guard who’d been harassing her, the one who’d been put down so easily by something unseen.

  “You can’t be certain of that, and we won’t risk it.”

  Samantha frowned. “I don’t like the idea of drugging him, Vadim. It will make it too hard to work with him.”

  “All you need to do is take care of the guards and get the van to the rendezvous point. We’ll be there to help.”

  She still didn’t like it, but there was no point in pushing it. “Fine. So I give him the drugs. Then what?”

  “They take him. You follow. Dispatch the guards. Take the van.”

  “I’m ready,” she said quietly. It was what they’d spoken about early on, almost two years ago, when Vadim had first asked her if she’d be able to take on this responsibility. What she would be ready to do in order to save this man’s life.

  Vadim paused. “Samantha, I don’t think I need to impress upon you how much we appreciate your contributions to the Crew. How valuable you are to us.”

  “It’s always nice to be loved,” she said with a small smile. “But what are you getting at?”

  “We’ve been aware of the Wyrmwood facilities for a long, long time. This is the first time we’ve successfully infiltrated. This would be our first successful extrication of one of the original Collins Creek subjects. We’re counting on your many skills to get Jed Collins out of there as unharmed as possible...”

  “That would be the ultimate goal, yes. To get him out without being harmed, without anyone being harmed. Without bringing any attention to the Crew.” She studied him through the computer screen. “But that’s not what you’re getting at.”

  “You’re important to us, that’s what I’m getting at.”

  “More important than Jed?” Samantha asked quietly.

  Vadim nodded, looking serious. “Absolutely. If it comes down to it, Samantha, and you feel you’ve been at all compromised, no matter where you are in the rescue, you get out. Even if it means leaving him behind.”

  “Leaving him to die?”

  “Yes,” Vadim said.

  “I’m not going to do that.” She shook her head. “No way.”

  “Samantha, Jed’s been kept in a high-security facility for almost the entirety of his life. The studies and tests they did on him before his skills began to deteriorate were some of the most highly controversial results ever to come out of a program like the Collins Creek experiment. The Crew’s been aware of him for a long time, but we’re not in the business of making soldiers. Nor in rehabilitating them...”

  “He’s not a soldier.” She shook her head again, forcing herself not to raise her voice. “I mean, I’ve read the reports, too, and yes, there were all those tests, all the things they proved he could do...but he doesn’t do them. He can’t anymore. He hasn’t been able to, not in years. That’s why they’re going to kill him—he’s done being useful.”

  “Samantha, I think you need to ask yourself something.” For a moment, she was sure Vadim was going to question her about the inappropriate sexual attraction she’d been fighting, but the older man simply said, “What’s more important to you? Saving his life? Or saving your own?”

  Saving Jed’s life, or saving her own.

  It seemed like a simple choice, didn’t it? It wouldn’t even be the first time she’d had to face a choice like that, and look, Samantha had her damage. Everyone did. Hers was that she’d been raised by a man who’d taught her how to kill someone with her bare hands before she’d ever learned to drive a car. She’d grown up in bunkers and safe houses, surrounded by weapons and preparing every day for the end of the world. If it came right down to it, she’d always known that if there was a choice between saving her own life and that of another, she was going to look out for number one.

  That did not mean she was the sort to cut and run, though. She never would’ve agreed to take on this job if she hadn’t believed with everything inside her that not only could she protect and rescue Jed Collins when the time was right, but also that he was worth making the effort for.

  * * *

  As a child, Jed had not understood what a full belly felt like. In the compound, there were no regular mealtimes. Deprivation was constant. Fasting had been considered a way of praying and starvation a blessing.

  He’d rarely been hungry since coming to Wyrmwood, but his stomach grumbled
now. He’d been avoiding finishing his meals. The bitter undertaste of the drugs had kept him from it. They were trying to sedate him beyond the pills he was regularly given.

  Scarier than that was the fact nobody had said a word about the unfinished trays he sent away after every meal. Two days since his last session with Ransom, and Jed had barely nibbled some dry toast and eaten a handful of nuts. He’d expected to be called down to the doctor’s office after the first day of not eating.

  It was time, he thought. Or would be, soon. The thought didn’t upset him as much as he thought it would.

  Still and silent, he closed his eyes. Let his breathing slow and deepen. He was far from sleep, but even if they were still somehow monitoring his brain waves, it wouldn’t matter. He didn’t have consistent brain waves, nothing that could be called normal, even for himself. It had been one of Ransom’s greatest frustrations, that inability to compare and contrast the test results to see if they could re-create what happened when Jed used his abilities.

  He sent out some tickling tendrils of thought, creeping like mice along the edges of the room. To the door. Around the frame. Through the cracks. Whispering into the hallway. Inching like a worm in the patterns on the tile, toward the nurse’s station.

  He stopped, startled enough to open his eyes before forcing himself to close them again, shifting as though he were dreaming. That was silly. He hadn’t dreamed in years, though none of the unseen observers would know that.

  Samantha was in the chair behind the desk. Playing a game of solitaire with real, physical cards. The edges soft and worn. Her fingers moved quickly, flipping the cards. Matching. Laying them down.

  When he sent himself out this way, it had always seemed to Jed as though he were floating. Invisible, even to himself. He could feel himself reach for something, but his body didn’t actually move and he didn’t see his own hand. Nor his body. If he turned to face a reflective surface, all he saw was whatever was behind him. He could feel, though. The coolness of the tile floor on his bare feet. The hush of the air currents pushing warmth from the vents in the ceiling. He could smell the scent of her soap and the mint gum she chewed.

  He’d been “flying” for years. It was the only way he could tolerate being kept in that small room, the only breaks being the walks to the testing rooms or his sessions with Dr. Ransom. When he was younger, he’d gone outside, but it was harder to control himself without walls and a ceiling to keep him anchored in place. When he was a little older, he’d considered letting himself get lost. Never coming back. His body would eventually die, and he would...what?

  He’d never figured that part out.

  Now, he watched her. This was not her shift, but a quick nudge of the computer pulled up the schedule to see she’d switched with Patty, who was taking a few days off. He did it so fast, opening and then closing the file to return the monitor to its sleep screen, there should’ve been no way for her to notice.

  Samantha, however, paused in the placing of the card in her hand. She looked up, not at the computer, but out toward where Jed would’ve been standing, if he were physically there. She tilted her head, a small smile quirking the side of her mouth. Without moving her head, she allowed her gaze to cut toward the computer screen. Then flicked back in front of the desk. She gave a low murmur and shook her head, then bent back to her cards.

  I’m here, he wanted to say. I’m right here, and I need you to see me. Really see me.

  He could’ve pushed those words into her mind, but again restrained himself from crossing that line. He continued to watch her for a while, thinking of the dream. It was the closest he would ever get to her, he thought, unable to make himself move on. He moved in a slow circle around her, taking in the card game. The opened wrapper of her granola bar. His phantom stomach clenched with hunger. She looked up, though there was no way she could’ve heard the boing-going of his belly from this far away.

  Again, she tilted her head. Listening. She put the cards down, sweeping them into a pile and tapping them to get them in place before setting them aside. She looked at the computer, still asleep.

  “Jed?” she whispered.

  Swift as a blink, he was back in his room. Sitting up on the bed, blinking, gasping aloud. Both hands clutching his guts, his hunger pressed aside for the moment by a spasm of nausea. He swung his feet over the side, letting his shoulders hunch. Not caring if the unblinking and all-seeing eye of the camera watched him.

  A minute or so later, the door opened. He lifted his head without moving from the bed. Samantha stepped through with a tray she set on the table without a word.

  “You should eat,” she said.

  “Not hungry.”

  “You’re hungry,” she said. “I...”

  Felt it.

  Jed did not allow himself to react. He couldn’t read minds. He could catch feelings, and because people didn’t think in sentences and paragraphs, but in images and scraps of emotion, he could sometimes get a handle on what they were thinking. Or maybe he only imagined he could.

  “I don’t want to eat,” Jed said.

  Samantha moved closer. Briskly, she pulled out her stethoscope. “How about I check you out, make sure everything’s okay?”

  “I’m fine,” he said. Too harsh. Too cold. He didn’t want her to touch him.

  She stopped a few feet from him. “Jed. If you’re not feeling well, I can call the doctor.”

  “I feel fine. I’m not hungry. Just tired. Go away and let me sleep.”

  She took another step closer to him. He shrugged away from her touch on his shoulder, though he wanted nothing more than to lean into it. To gather her close, to press his forehead against the welcoming softness of her belly. To have her stroke her fingers through his hair...

  “You need to let me check you out,” she said in a firm, no-nonsense voice that finally made him look at her.

  “Or what? You’ll call the guards? Have them restrain me?”

  Her pale blue eyes flashed for a moment, but the rest of her expression remained neutral. “I don’t want to do that. I just want to make sure you’re all right. That’s all. Your chart says you haven’t eaten in the past couple days, and I have some new meds I’m required to give you. On an empty stomach, they could make you sick.”

  “I’m not an idiot,” Jed said. “I’ve been on some kind of medication or another for the past twenty-some years. And I don’t need anything new, so you can take them and shove them up Dr. Ransom’s ass.”

  He said it to shock her, to get a reaction from her. Not pity. That would’ve pissed him off. But something. An acknowledgment, maybe, that this situation was as fucked up as a life could be. It might be all he’d ever really known, but he still knew that.

  “I know you’re not an idiot.” Now she glanced upward at the camera. Her expression firmed. She looked at him. Lowered her voice. “You should eat to keep up your strength.”

  “They put stuff in the food,” he said, not bothering to keep himself quiet. He also threw a glance toward the camera and its bland, unyielding gaze. “I told Ransom I didn’t need anything for anxiety. He’s having them put it in the food. I can taste it. I don’t need anything else on top of it.”

  An expression he couldn’t name skittered across her face. Her lips pressed together. “Will you let me examine you for the records? Please. I’ll just check your vitals. Same as usual.”

  He stared at her for a long, silent moment before finally nodding sharply. “Fine. But I’m not going to eat anything. I told him, I don’t need anything to keep me calm.”

  “Of course not.” She moved closer. Her fingertips pressed beneath his jaw, probing. She pressed the back of her hand to his forehead in a gesture that surprised him, but swiftly took it away so she could use the stethoscope. Listened to his heart. Took his pulse. The grip of her fingers on his wrist sent his heart beating too fast,
the way it always did, but he forced himself not to react.

  “They’ll come for you.” She said it so low into his ear that he couldn’t be sure he’d heard her. “Soon. When they do, I’m going to get you away from here. But you need to pretend to take these meds for me. Please.”

  Then she stepped back, out of reach. “I can’t make you eat, but we both know I can call the orderly in here and force you to take the medicine. I don’t want to do that. I don’t think you want me to have to do that, do you?”

  Who was going to come for him? He had heard her say it, he knew it. He hadn’t imagined it. And he knew she was right, because he’d been waiting for that to happen. The question was, how did Samantha know it?

  “No,” he said after a moment at her hard stare. “I guess I don’t.”

  She held up a needle and syringe. Usually they gave him pills. For a second or so when she stepped closer, he was sure she still meant to drug him, and he tensed. Pushing. She felt it, he could tell. Her eyes went a little wide.

  “It won’t hurt,” she said in a bright, false voice, her gaze boring into his. “I promise you.”

  He knew better than to trust her. She worked for them, didn’t she? Yet something made him hold out his arm, bare below the short sleeve of his faded gray scrub shirt. He braced himself for the pinch and sting of the needle, but Samantha kept up a low patter of meaningless small talk as she placed the needle against his skin, but not into it. She dispensed the contents into a small cotton ball she then pretended to use to cover up the puncture.

  “There,” she said. “You’re going to be just fine.”

  * * *

  Samantha wanted to linger, but that would be the best way to ruin this whole operation. Instead, she looked closely into Jed’s eyes, thinking of the reports that had tested his telepathic talents. When he was younger, he’d been able to choose the circle, square, wavy lines, whatever was on the small cards used in the test kit. He’d been tested for other thought reading, too, without any confirmation that he could do that. Somewhere along the way he’d stopped being accurate. The reports had determined he was incapable of anything beyond the most average of guesswork. His abilities to manipulate physical objects in his environment, that had been substantiated, but they’d never been able to prove he could read minds. One of the doctors had postulated that, even worse, Jed’s ability to predict and empathize with the emotions of others was far lower than average.