by Amelia Jade
Connor grabbed her hand suddenly, and tugged her after him. “This way,” he proclaimed, making a beeline for one of the closest bars.
Maddy didn’t fight it, enjoying the contact with him, and trying to decipher if the tingle she felt was some sort of static electric charge, or just the result of the backflips her stomach was doing at holding his hand. He hadn’t just taken her hand in his, he had purposefully entangled his fingers in hers first.
“We are not getting drunk!” she protested, trying to slow him down.
“What?” he turned with a frown. Seeing the look on her face he barked a laugh. “My dear Maddy, while I am a rogue, a scoundrel, a,” he paused. “A—”
“Yes, yes,” she said dryly. “I’m sure you’re all of those things. But you’re still not getting drunk.”
He slapped his free hand to his heart, then tugged her close with their enjoined hands.
“You hurt my honor,” he said, pretending to be hurt.
She snorted, not believing the act for a second. “You’re hopeless. But no beer!”
Crestfallen, he nodded. “What about a bottle of water?” he asked piteously.
Arching an eyebrow, she nodded, then before he could react pulled him toward her, and spun past him. Now she was closest to the bar. Without letting go of his hand, she moved through the opening in the bar, and tugged him to the side. They were still holding hands, but now she was behind the bar, and he was in front of it, their arms resting on the bartop itself.
“What can I get you?” she asked, affecting an air of disinterest, trying to mimic any normal bartender after about half an hour of work, tired of drunk idiots.
Connor let his mouth hang open a bit while his eyes closed slightly, and he began to weave back and forth, playing along.
“Why, you beautiful creature you, I’ll take one of your most expensive bottles.”
“Bottle of what?” she asked with a roll of her eyes.
“That new stuff,” he slurred, doing an admirable impression of an annoying drunk. “That Dihydrogen Monoxide I’ve heard so much about. Apparently that stuff is the shit.”
Maddy couldn’t help herself; she burst into laughter. His impression was just too spot on. He truly sounded like a drunk moron trying to sound smart.
“Take your damn Dihydrogen Monoxide,” she giggled, letting go of his hand so she could reach under the counter and open a mini fridge. She pushed the bottle of water across the bar at him.
“Ah, just what I wanted!” Connor gloated, spinning the cap off and taking a long swig.
Maddy came back around the bar, her own bottle of “dihydrogen monoxide” in hand. What a silly way to refer to H20, or water.
Still, he had made her not only smile, but truly laugh, a relaxing feeling that helped her cope with all the things going on.
“Connor,” she said, wanting to voice a question she had had for a while.
“Yes?” He turned to look at her, and judging by the expression on his face, he knew that he needed to answer this question seriously.
“What happens once I get to Genesis Valley?”
He paused mid-step, putting the cap back on his bottle before shoving it in his back pocket. Without waiting for an invitation, he reached out with his long arms and pulled her in close, wrapping her tight in his muscles. It still made for such a sharp contrast, to know just how much power was contained in his form, and to then feel the tenderness of his touch as she was just now. The two couldn’t be farther from each other, and yet she knew that it was those polar opposites that formed the man standing in front of her right then.
Maddy shook her head mentally. How had she come this far in such a short period of time? She knew that shifters’ emotions worked differently than a normal human’s. If a bond was going to form, it formed much quicker than it took for a human to come to the same depth of emotional involvement. That was why shifters often saw and recognized their mates in what, to humans at least, seemed like an instant. As the daughter of a shifter, she knew that wasn’t the truth, though it still happened very quickly.
Could the same thing be happening to her, right then and there? It seemed far-fetched. She wasn’t a shifter, after all. She was only a half-blood. While to Maddy that wasn’t a bad thing, she did wish she had another presence inside of her that could confirm what the hell was going on between her and Connor. It would certainly make things less confusing for her.
“What happens to you, is up to you,” he said, stressing the word. She knew then that he had seen through her question, to understand what she was really asking.
What is going to become of us?
Connor’s life, his job, was set in King City. He was part of the Underground, helping shifters to escape the city before the Agency got ahold of them. That’s the way it was, and the way it had to be. She could not, would not allow him to abandon such an important task for her.
Maddy just wished there was a way she could be of help instead of a hindrance.
“I’ve never really fit in anywhere,” she said at last, stepping back from his embrace. “I had twenty-five years to fit in here in King City, and I failed miserably. How am I going to manage in a brand-new place?”
Connor, to her surprise, smiled at her. Taking her hand, he tugged her over to one of the couches in the VIP area where they sat down together, his arm around her, her head resting comfortably on his shoulder.
“You seem to be fitting in just fine around here,” he remarked. “It’ll be even easier in Genesis Valley.”
“Why is that?” She didn’t think she had been fitting in, but at the same time, if Maddy was honest with herself, she hadn’t felt out of place either.
“It’s all shifters. By the sounds of it, you’ve been interacting with the normal, human world. You had a hard time of it. You’ve only been here for a day and you already seem to be carving a place out. This is a mixture of shifters and humans. Imagine if we put you in an environment of all shifters,” he said, his eyes looking faraway as he said it.
Then he laughed. “You’d be running the place inside a week!”
Maddy laughed. Though she didn’t actually believe him, the compliment was still nice to hear.
Then she sobered quickly. “Once I’m safe there, you’re going to come back here, aren’t you?”
Connor did not hesitate. “Yes,” he said firmly. “I need to be here, where I can make a difference. I have the training, and the skills, to help the shifters here. It would be wrong of me to abandon them.” He paused, his sea-blue eyes drilling in to her. “No matter how much I may wish to.”
She swallowed hard at the overt indication that he didn’t want to leave her. It was the most forthright statement either of them had made about having anything more than a physical relationship.
“Could I...” she hesitated.
“Go on,” he prodded.
“What if I stayed too?” she asked.
Connor shook his head emphatically. “No. Not an option. The Agency knows who you are now. You wouldn’t be safe going out in public. You’re human, Maddy. They would get to you.” He grimaced. “I’m sorry.”
She felt anger blossom inside of her. Not at his words, since they were true. No, she was angered at the truth inside them. She was human. Maddy didn’t have a problem with that; she didn’t feel that it was inferior. But in this situation, in the shifter world, it was a liability. She hated being a liability.
Maddy thought about arguing, about telling him that she could be helpful, and that she deserved the choice to put herself in danger. That was where the argument fell flat, however. None of the other humans helping in the Underground were known to the Agency. They weren’t in danger at this time. Maddy could choose to put herself in danger all she wanted. But if the Agency found her, and tracked her, they could find all of the others. So not only would she be putting herself in danger, but she would be endangering everyone else. She couldn’t do that. It wasn’t right.
So Maddy knew she would go to Genesis Vall
ey, and that she would probably never see Connor again.
“Do you ever, um, go back?” she asked. “On vacation or something?”
He smiled, pulling her tight. “I’m generally there for two to three days a month, sometimes more,” he explained. “Normally when we extract someone from the city, one of the four of us goes with them all the way to ensure they stay safe. We do that in rotating shifts. We’ve only been here fighting them for two months now, but I’ve been back six times so far myself.”
Maddy nodded, but she was frowning. “If that’s the case, how come two went with my dad?”
“Contingency.” He shrugged. “If we were ever to get ambushed like we did getting your father out, we were all to go. That way they wouldn’t know the faces of any of the others, only the ones they caught.”
“Ah,” she said. “I wondered why they didn’t jump off the train and come back to fight.”
Connor nodded. “Trust me, they wanted to. I would have wanted to as well, if I were in their place. But we have to look at the greater good here. If they catch us, that puts a serious dent in the Underground’s abilities to get the city shifters out of here.”
“But when you leave, won’t you all be gone?” she asked.
“For a short while, yes. But Jared, our leader, should be back tomorrow. So there won’t be much time where no one is around. The rest of us will get back as soon as we can.”
Maddy fell silent. She had another question she wanted to ask, but wasn’t sure how to phrase it.
Connor took that moment to lift her chin with his fingers, until she was angled back just enough for him to kiss her.
She inhaled sharply as his lips pressed against hers, their mouths opening slightly as they explored. His tongue flicked out quickly, and she responded. It was like a game, but one that awoke something within her.
“Wait,” she hissed, kissing him hard before pulling back.
“What? What did I do?” he asked, looking worried.
Maddy shook her head. “I need to ask you something, before…” she trailed off, not wanting to verbalize it in case it jinxed anything.
“Ask away,” he said. “I have no secrets from you.”
Taking a deep breath, she asked the question she needed to know. “Why did you end up in Genesis Valley?”
Connor hesitated.
Maddy sat up in surprise. She didn’t force him to keep speaking, but his body language told her that this wasn’t something he had intended on discussing just then. Whatever it was, it couldn’t be good. She braced herself for whatever he told her.
“When I was younger,” he began, looking up at something only he could see. A distant memory, perhaps. “I was not a good person. I wandered the country, taking what I wanted, when I wanted it. Food, clothes, things like that. Petty crime. At one point, I met a girl. We talked a lot, flirted, and began to spend time together. We had to be careful though; her parents were wealthy, and didn’t want her spending time with a homeless boy, let alone a shifter.”
He snorted. “I actually think they would have preferred if I were just homeless.”
Maddy smiled.
“Anyway,” he continued. “One of the other boys caught us, and threatened to tell her parents about her spending time with me, and doing things teenage boys and girls do. We ignored him, thinking it was bullshit. So one night, I was late for our meetup. I get there, and she’s nowhere to be seen. I found her scent and followed it. She’d been there. I found her just in time to see her take a gun from her purse, and shoot this other guy. I ran to her. She was shaking, and her clothing was torn up. This guy had been trying to get what he knew I had, in the worst kind of way.”
She felt her hands rise to her mouth as he continued to speak, telling her the story of his youth. The pain in his voice was so thick it reached out and slapped at her. Maddy hadn’t meant for this to be a traumatic retelling of his childhood. She figured he had beat someone up or something.
“The sirens sounded so fast,” he said softly. “We had seconds, perhaps. The other guy was on the ground, screaming in pain. So I did the only thing I could think of. I kissed her, rubbed some of my spit on her face to leave DNA, told her to run, and then I shot her in the arm. Then I shot him in the head. I led the police on a merry chase, ensuring they knew I was behind everything, taunting them about how I had kidnapped the girl, forced her to do what I wanted.”
“Why?” she asked.
“Her parents had threatened to disown her if she saw me again. To cut her off from their money, put her out on the street, all that. She told me she was okay with that, that she loved me enough to do it, but I knew the truth. I cared for her, but I was only sixteen. I didn’t know where I would be the next week, let alone the rest of my life. I loved her, but she wasn’t the one. So I made a cover story as best I could, that she was innocent, and that I had done everything, in a way that wouldn’t get her disowned.”
Connor licked his lips. “Last I heard, she was running a company that helped kids on the street gain life skills and enter the workforce. She was doing pretty well with it. So something good came out of all that, in the end.”
“Oh.” It was so inadequate of a statement after all that he had just told her, but Maddy was at a loss for real words. She had to say something though. Anything. “So you gave up your life to protect her?”
He smiled ruefully. “As it turned out, I think I actually only started my life after that. I dodged the police and headed for Genesis Valley, which was a place I’d only heard about from other shifters once or twice. When I got there, I got put into the training program. Twelve years later, here I am.”
“But why did you shoot him again?” she asked.
Connor’s eyes hardened. “She wasn’t the first girl he had put his hands on. I just didn’t have any proof until then, but there were at least six others I was positive of. Two of whom he killed.”
Maddy shuddered.
“I didn’t like it, but I would be lying if I said I regret it. The world is a better place without him in it.”
“There is a lot more to you than I imagined,” she said at last, digesting the information dump about his past.
A part of her had known that Connor killed. She had, after all, seen it in action that first night. Or at least she had heard it happen. But to know it in the back of her head, and then to hear it first hand from his mouth, were two very separate things indeed. If it weren’t for the honesty and conviction in his voice, she would probably have felt very different about him. Connor knew that he was good at what he did, but he only did it if it was right. That was what she had gotten from the story.
He did what he had to, to protect the girl, to make her look innocent, even going so far as shooting her in the arm. That seemed a little extreme to her, but then again, at sixteen, it may have seemed like it was necessary. She wasn’t there, and it was very easy to judge something like that in hindsight. But to be there, in the moment, it may have felt necessary to make her look innocent.
“And here I thought you were just some street creep who liked to stare at me,” she told him, smiling to lighten the mood.
“What?” he looked at her in shock. “A creep?”
She laughed, the noise sounding good after such a serious conversation. “You stared at me for a good long time on the side of the street. I thought you were some creep! Then to my surprise, an hour later you’re at my door, trying to rescue me.”
To Maddy’s surprise, Connor flushed a deep red as she laughed.
“Are you blushing?” she exclaimed.
“I didn’t mean to be creepy,” he told her through his embarrassment, not acknowledging her question. “It’s just–”
He stopped abruptly.
“Just what?” she prodded, leaning in closer to him.
“It was your eyes,” he said, the blue in his eyes flaring even brighter as he spoke, the intensity of his emotions seeping into his gaze. “I’ve never seen any more beautiful before.”
Her g
iggling died abruptly as he spoke.
“It was your eyes that I noticed,” she replied after a moment’s hesitation. “They’re so blue. I noticed them right through your mask when you came to my door.” She paused. “I still notice them every time you look at me like that,” she finished, feeling slightly out of breath as she continued to stare at him.
The tension was no longer awkward between them. It was electric. Madison could feel the power almost crackling in the thin hairs on her arm as the skin there neared his.
“Connor, I—”
His finger pressed against her lips as he continued to gaze at her, their eyes saying nothing, and yet speaking volumes at the same time.
“Where did you sleep last night?” he asked.
She frowned slightly at what seemed to be a random question.
“Flint gave me keys to a room.” Her voice grew very quiet as she realized where he was going with it.
“Show me,” he commanded.
Breathlessly she nodded, taking his hand and pulling him along. Madison felt as if she were floating as she showed Connor to her room, neither of them speaking a word as they went, so obsessed with each other they ignored the world at large.
She fiddled with the key, taking far longer than should have been necessary to finally turn it in the lock. The room itself was sparse. There was a small bed in the back left corner. A little dresser with four drawers to the right of it. A chair and a small desk completed the windowless room.
It was perfect.
Connor entered the room after her, his large presence immediately making it feel smaller.
No, not smaller, she corrected. More intimate.
There was no avoiding him now. Not that she wanted to. Madison felt herself actually initiate, by reaching out to press one hand gently on his firm stomach, feeling his abs through the material of his shirt. Was she really doing this? Was this actually about to happen?
Connor’s hand slid across her waist and onto her rear, cupping one of her cheeks and pulling her closer to him. Instinctively her hands braced herself on his chest, fingers splayed across the broad muscle. Even her long fingers couldn’t cover the muscle on their own; that’s how naturally big he was. It wasn’t bulky, awkward muscle either. It was just his natural powerful size.