She placed the bottle on the nightstand and settled back next to him. He tugged her close, pulling her back against his chest to spoon her.
“Not a nightmare. It was a night terror.”
“What’s the difference?”
“A nightmare is basically a bad dream that happens during the REM phase of sleep,” he explained. “With a night terror, it happens between sleep phases when a sudden fear interrupts the cycle, so essentially, I’m partly awake. Most people who have night terrors don’t even remember having them.”
“Most people, but not you?”
“No, I remember. Maybe because mine aren’t random or natural. These are a result of Sinclair and the genetic modifications he made to me.”
She was tempted to ask him what he saw, but it seemed like such an intimate question. A strange thought, perhaps, after what they had shared, but she suspected the answer would expose a part of him to her that no one else had ever seen before.
His fingers traced a swirling path down her arm before entwining with hers atop the comforter.
“Sinclair is always there,” he said after a long pause.
“That’s understandable. The things he did … It can’t be easy to simply put it in the past.”
“I was Three.”
“When you went into the lab?”
“Not when, who. I was Subject Three. I suppose I could have just as easily been Four, except they took me out a minute before Caleb. Three was the only name I had until Mark took over the job as the teacher at the lab and gave each of us names.”
“Your dad worked there?” She was shocked that Mark Walker had been involved with anything that hadn’t to those boys.
“Only for a few months. He took the job without any idea what was going on. He figured it out pretty fast and worked with the feds to get us out. Without him, we’d all probably be dead, or so fucked up we’d wish we were.”
Cora stayed quiet, not wanting to interrupt him and risk him stop talking. She lifted their joined hands and pressed a kiss to the back of his hand.
“That last day in the labs, when the feds raided the place, they found me strapped to an exam table. My heart had stopped and Sinclair had already written me off.”
Her chest tightened at the thought of how close he’d come to dying.
“Every time I have one of these night terrors, I relive another day in the lab,” he said. “The needles, the cuts, those were nothing compared to what my body went through when his serums caused mutations.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, tears blurring her vision. “I’m so sorry you went through that.”
She felt his head nod against her shoulder. Nothing she said would erase the horrors he lived through. Behind her, the thumping of Gavin’s heart calmed, and the rise and fall of his chest slowed. She thought he’d fallen asleep but then he moved their hands to rest on her hip.
“What are we doing, Cora?” he asked as he slipped his fingers from between hers. They skimmed up along her ribs, stopping when they brushed the underside of her breast.
Cora thought of what Hailey had said to her about being willing to take what she could get. There’d been a part of her that had scorned Hailey for doing that. Yet, there she was, doing the exact same thing.
“I love you. That’s all I can do,” she answered.
Her words seemed to take him back. His fingers stilled, and there was a catch in his breath before he let out a deep sigh.
“Would you like to go to dinner?”
Cora twisted her head around to look at him. “You’re serious? Right now?”
“Yeah, I’m serious. Not now, maybe later this week.”
She turned back around, trying to hide the smile that curled her lips up. He sounded so nervous and hesitant—so unlike Gavin.
“Like a date?” she clarified. She tried to tell herself that wasn’t what she wanted, because to him a date meant something entirely different than her aching heart hoped.
His chest shook with a deep chuckle.
“Yeah, as a date.”
Asking Cora out had not been in Gavin’s plans. In fact, it was the opposite of what he’d intended to say. Yet, as her proclamation of love hung in the stillness of the silent room, all he could think of was that he wanted more than just sex from her.
She took her time answering and he wondered if he’d managed to fuck it up. Hell, he’d only ever asked out Lela and that was when he was sixteen. In the time since Lela’s death, he’d hooked up with Hailey and a few other chicks, but dating never entered into it.
“I’d like that,” she finally said.
Gavin hadn’t realized how tense he’d been until her answer triggered a rush of relief. His nose buried in her hair, he inhaled the sweet vanilla sense of her shampoo.
He reached down and lifted her leg, angling it to rest on top of his, leaving her open to his touch. He pressed his pelvis forward, and his hardening cock twitched in response to the feel of her moist desire gathering along the lips of her pussy.
“I wish I could love you. I don’t know what I’ll want from you in the future,” he admitted. “For now, this is all I can offer you.”
As much as he wanted to deny there were emotions involved, he couldn’t. In her quiet little way, Cora had managed to wiggle her way under his skin. The thought of not being able to touch her, to taste her lips, or to hear her soft laugh left him feeling empty.
“I can accept that,” she said. “For now.”
He slid two fingers inside her then pulled them back out to circle her clit. Her body trembled, and he increased the pressure on her sensitive bud as she rocked her hips back and forth.
The sweet scent of her arousal surrounded him, and the urge to possess her took over him. He growled and ground his penis along the crease of her ass.
Watching as she reached up to play with her nipples, he learned that she loved to gently roll them and then give a firm tug. She tossed her head back and he kissed his way up along the side of her neck. She gave a shuddering sigh as he lapped at her skin then gently blew on it.
“Do you want me to fuck you, Coraline?” he said as he flicked a finger over her clit. “Do you want my cock sliding in your pussy?”
“Yes,” she gasped. “Oh, God. Fuck me.”
He angled them so she lay partially back on him. Between her legs, he guided his penis to her entrance and sank in until he was completely enveloped in her warm pussy. She gripped him like a velvet fist milking his cock as he pulled almost all the way out. Gavin struggled to keep moving slowly, digging his fingers into the soft flesh of her thigh, but instinct took over and his hips surged thrusting, driving into Cora’s depths.
Tingles crept along the base of his spine, and his rhythm grew wild as he lost all sense of control. Tension seized him and he slammed his cock into her one more time. His eyes squeezed shut and he groaned as his climax tore through him and his seed spurted forth.
Around him, Cora’s pussy milked his cock and he pumped his hips. Letting go of her leg, he returned to her sensitive nub, rolling and tugging it in the same pattern she used on her nipples. Her hips ground back into him and her back arched as she strained toward her climax. He rubbed in quick, hard circles until she gasped and spasmed around him.
He slowed his movements, dragging out their pleasure until he slipped free of her moist grasp, their combined juices coating his flesh.
“Shit,” he said and she tensed against him. “Please tell me you’re on the pill.”
She relaxed and gave him a slight smile over her shoulder. “I am.”
A puff of air rushed out and he swept a strand of her hair behind her neck. He’d never really considered whether he wanted kids. With Lela, they’d been too young to even start talking about it, though he knew she’d wanted children one day.
“That’s good,” he said. “I’m clean. I got tested a few weeks ago, and I haven’t been with anyone else since.”
“I haven’t been with anyone since my last test, either.”
He shift
ed uncomfortably at the thought of her with another guy. He refused to call it jealousy. No, it was more like … Fuck. His arms tightened around her as he pulled in a deep breath.
Cora pulled out of his hold and turned around. She cupped his face in her small hands, rubbing her soft palms along his stubbled jaw, and gazed into his eyes.
The words were on the tip of his tongue. Você não é nada para mim. His entire body reverberated with the need to say them, to put her in her place, to remind him that no matter how mind-blowing sex with her was she was nothing to him. Nothing more than a body.
But as he stared into her beautiful blue eyes, he didn’t want to say them. He didn’t want to make her just another body. He might not have loved Cora, but the idea of her being nothing to him twisted his insides.
Her lips brushed along his with a fleeting touch then she whispered, “Sleep.”
That one simple word was all he needed to keep the words unspoken.
Chapter Seventeen
GAVIN SAT WITH CALEB and Logan at a table in the back corner of the bar. Caleb said something, and Gavin gave a one-shoulder shrug, hearing his brother’s words but not processing. He was too busy watching Cora from across the bar. She filled her tray with drink orders and then sashayed across the floor, carefully balancing it with one hand.
She had on a pair of short shorts, and he swore he caught a glimpse of her ass cheeks when she bent over to clear the table. And he wasn’t the only one who’d noticed. He saw the looks the guys around the bar gave her, but as tempted as he was to buy her a pair of shorts to hide her glorious ass from their perverted eyes, he refused to miss out on his chance to ogle her himself.
Something hit his forehead, and he jerked in response, looking down at the table to see a balled up beer bottle label. He glared at a smirking Caleb.
“You seem distracted,” Caleb said then lifted his beer to take a swig.
Gavin grunted and shoved a cheese-and-sour-cream-loaded nacho in his mouth.
“What do you know about David McCarty?” he asked around a mouthful of food.
“The name sounds familiar.” Caleb’s brow wrinkled in thought. Gavin waited a moment as his brother pulled the name from his memory, which thanks to Sinclair’s experiments, didn’t take long. “He’s a cop. He took Cora’s statement after the first accident.”
“Try both accidents.” Gavin opened a file on his tablet and slid it across to the other man.
He’d spent the day looking into the police reports, something about it nagging at him. What were the chances that both times, Cora’s account had been dismissed? When he first pulled the accident reports, they seemed pretty straight forward. McCarty signed the first statement while a different officer’s name, Patrick Greene, was on the second. It wasn’t until Gavin moved on to the 911 transcripts that McCarty’s name popped up again as the responding officer. He replayed every word Cora told him about what happened and realized she’d only spoken to McCarty. So, he pulled the reports again and that’s when he discovered it.
“Look at the signatures.” He used his fingers to expand the image they were looking at. “Different names, same handwriting.”
“Son-of-a-bitch. How certain are you?” Logan leaned back in his chair.
“Hundred percent.”
“You used the analysis software I sent you?” Caleb asked.
“Didn’t need to. There were so many commonalities between these two, I figured it might be faster to check out this Patrick Greene’s actual signature. So I pulled up his DMV file. This is a straight-up simulation forgery, and a crappy one, at that.”
“You pulled his DMV file? Should I be worried about any trace coming back to one of my IPs?”
“Nope. Noah’s girlfriend got it for me.”
Logan raised an eyebrow. “And does Alicia know she helped you?”
“Well, technically she did Noah a favor by checking out Sky’s new boyfriend. So I guess she thought she was helping Noah out.” Gavin smirked. “Apparently, she had a lot of questions about why our twenty-year-old sister is dating a guy who’s old enough to be her grandpa.”
“All right, so McCarty is hiding something,” Caleb said. “What?”
“No clue. All he did was take Cora’s statement. I don’t see anything different than what she told me. I can’t see any reason why he wouldn’t sign his own name.”
Caleb pressed his lips together and tapped a finger on the edge of the tablet. “Let me do some digging. I’ve got a few connections on the force I might be able to hit up.”
Gavin didn’t like the idea of not being in control, but he wasn’t in the same position as Caleb. His brother’s work with TanTech opened a lot of doors Gavin wouldn’t get through on his own. If they had time, he’d be able to figure a way to access the info, but time wasn’t something they had. Sinclair had shown twice that he would risk Cora’s life for whatever twisted reason motivated him. They needed to bring him down before he could try again.
“Has Merrick found anything on the guy who ran Cora off the road?”
Caleb shook his head. “He’s accessed the local footage, but it’s scarce. He’s working on a different angle, looking into damaged rentals and repair shops.”
“Fuck, this sucks.” Gavin tipped his head back to gaze up at the ceiling and dug his fingers into his hair.
“At least you didn’t have to work today,” Cora said, staring down at him.
“Hey.” He returned the smile she gave him. Her tongue peeked out to moisten her lips, and he was thrown back to that very morning when she’d used those lips for something other than speaking.
“I’m off in a couple minutes, you guys want anything else?”
“We’re good,” Logan answered for all of them. “Come sit with us after.”
Her eyes flicked from Logan then back to Gavin. The hesitation was a glimpse into her uncertainty about how open they were going to be about being together. He gave a slight nod, and her smile grew.
“Yeah, I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
He watched her walk away, her ponytail swishing in time with her hips.
“How’s she holding up?” Caleb asked.
Gavin glanced at his brother and found Caleb’s eyes following Cora across the room. The inclination to punch his twin had his hands balled into fists, but he held back. Cora was a sexy woman, and men were going to stare at her. He couldn’t beat up every guy who looked at her.
“She’s fine.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you be so civil toward Cora,” Logan remarked. “For a while, I thought I’d have to fire one of you. Well, fire you.”
“So much for family first.”
“I thought we already settled this? Cora is family.”
“How did things go at the lab?” Caleb twirled his empty beer bottle on its rim, a circle of condensation forming on the table.
“Nielson tried to deny working with Sinclair, but she had all of his notes on Cora. Whatever he did to us, he hasn’t stopped.”
“You really think that’s what he’s doing?”
“Absolutely. There was a photo of Cora with Subject 8 written across it.” Gavin grabbed a bunch of nachos and dropped them on the small plate in front of him. “At first, I thought he was taunting me, letting me know what he could do. But Nielson’s questions were too specific. She was looking for certain pieces of info from Cora.”
“Did she get it?” Caleb tugged the nacho platter across the table, out of Gavin’s reach.
“No.”
“So all of this was bait? He didn’t do anything to Cora?”
“He injected her with the PH-9E serum. Some kind of variation on the last test he did on us.”
He was on the verge of telling them about the visions Cora had been having when he noticed his brothers looking past him. A glance over his shoulder revealed Cora walking toward them. She’d changed out of the snug black Porter’s Pub shirt and into a wispy gypsy style top that barely clung to her shoulders.
His foot h
ooked around the leg of the empty chair beside him and pulled it out for her. The fact that it moved closer to him was pure coincidence. Placing her drink on the table, she slid onto the chair and gave a wide smile in greeting. He wasn’t sure what he expected when she arrived, but the casual greeting, no different than what she gave his brothers, wasn’t it.
“Gavin was just telling us that Nielson confirmed Sinclair injected you with some type of gene mutation serum.” Caleb rested his elbows on the table and leaned toward Cora. “So, I have to conclude that you’ve been exhibiting symptoms.”
She turned surprised eyes on to Gavin. “You didn’t tell them?”
“I thought it would be easier if you explained.”
While she told his brothers about the visions, he took the time to study her. Earlier, her hair had been pulled back into its normal high ponytail, keeping it out of her way during work. Now, though, her soft curls were loose covering her shoulders, and the sight brought a knowing smile to his face. Thanks to the scruff of his beard, she’d woken with a case of beard burn along her delicate skin.
Under the table, he slid his hand over her knee and up to her bare thigh. Her hand clamped down on his before he could go any further.
“We can use this,” Logan said once Cora finished describing the visions.
“How?” Cora asked.
“We’ve been chasing Sinclair, always one step behind him. He’s out there watching us, waiting to strike,” he explained. “With your visions, we can figure out exactly when and where he’ll be and grab him before he makes his move.”
Caleb nodded, an eager look taking over his face. “You mentioned having a log of the visions. We need to use that data to find patterns with Sinclair’s movements.”
“There are no patterns,” Cora said. “That’s the problem. Everything is random, constantly changing.”
Gavin and Caleb flashed each other identical smirks. Identifying patterns, whether binary, mathematical, or behavioral, was where they excelled. Nielson once told them their ability to find those patterns along with their eidetic memories were due to PH-02F, a genetic modifier that enhanced the brain’s visual and information processing, strengthening synaptic efficiency.
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