Through the Static

by Jeanette Grey

  “I do,” she answered shakily. “What we did was never meant to be used like that. To force people to do things…it was a perversion of everything we were trying to do.” The usual rage and disgust rose up in her, but she tempered it and forced it down. She could tell he got a hint of it from the way he stiffened, though.

  “You hate Threes.”

  Pain skittered across her ribs at the dejectedness in his mental voice. Wanting so badly for him to understand, she softened her tone and her posture, stroking her thumb over the backs of his knuckles. “I hate the people who make Threes. What they do to people. Erasing their personalities and their free will.”

  His jaw was still set, his posture tense. “You’re right to hate them.”

  Only, she couldn’t tell if he was still talking about the members of a Three or about the monsters who made them. And she didn’t know how to answer him either way.

  She regarded him in psychic silence for a moment before continuing, moderating her thoughts and redirecting them to safer ground—back to his original question.

  “Ever since, we’ve been working to study the kind of link that binds them together. It hasn’t always made us popular.” When he didn’t respond, she plowed ahead. “Several companies who create or contract Threes have been trying to stop us.”

  That got a response. He stiffened visibly. “They’ve threatened you?”

  “Repeatedly. Sometimes in veiled ways. Sometimes less so. We decided we needed to be prepared, just in case. The woman I work with… My mentor…” Aurelia hesitated as she remembered Isabel’s voice, cautioning her against sharing too much. She pushed on anyway. “Something happened to her. I don’t know what. But she’s always been paranoid. Rightly so in this case, as it turns out.” She shivered. “Last night was the first outright attack, but we’d suspected one would come. Really…” She thought back on all the signs that had seemed so obvious in hindsight. “I should have known.”

  “Do you know what prompted it? Why now?”

  “We were getting ready to go public. Last night’s meeting was with a financier who was going to help us. Though now, I don’t even know if that was real or just a ploy to get us out in the woods. Alone and vulnerable.”

  “Go public about what?”

  She looked up, connecting her gaze with his. “Our findings. We’ve been studying what that kind of link does to people over the long term. The damage.”

  His face softened with understanding. “That’s how you knew about the glitches in our link.”

  “Yes. And how to fix them.”

  “You really think you can?”

  Determination rose in her. “I’ll get you free. Somehow. I promise.”

  It didn’t seem to reassure him as much as she thought it would.

  He stopped cold. “And if I don’t want to be free?”

  She rounded on him, almost dropping his hand before he caught her, holding her fingers firmly in his. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “You want me to let you go back to them?”

  He couldn’t. He’d already been chafing so much under their control, and even just in the scant hours he’d been on his own, he’d bloomed so much. He’d been funny and kind and passionate. He couldn’t go back. He wouldn’t.

  He interrupted, his tone harsh. “That’s not what I said.”

  He was staring right at her, his gaze dark and earnest as they came to a stop in the middle of the sidewalk, facing each other down. She reached out to probe his mind, searching for what he was saying, but his thoughts were closed.

  “What do you mean?” she demanded.

  His gaze bored into hers, searching for something. She wanted him to find it, wanted to explain and to understand. But after a long minute, he looked away, the expression on his face heartbreaking, though she didn’t know why.

  “Come on,” he said, resigned. “We’re close.”

  For the first time since he’d prompted her about her background, she really opened her eyes to their location. Sure enough, he’d steered them in precisely the course she’d set out. They were less than a block away.

  “This isn’t over,” she warned.

  He didn’t respond, just pulled her in closer to the shelter of his body as they navigated the last stretch. On extra-high alert now, she searched the street for anyone watching. There was no sign of movement, but she kept thinking she was seeing curtains shifting or shadows darting around behind the boarded-up windows of abandoned buildings. Finally, they arrived at the deceptively simple chain-link fence surrounding her property.

  She reached out with her mind to tap into the security system. To her relief, it told her that no one had accessed it since the last time she’d checked in—that no one had been through this gate or through the door. Still, she checked the little mechanical trap she’d laid at the latch of the gate, designed to indicate if anyone had opened it.

  It hadn’t been disturbed. They were safe.

  Her heart pounded harder now, but at the same time it felt like all her energy was leaking from her skin. Now that they were almost there, the violence of the morning and the terror of flight, the physical exhaustion of crossing miles of dangerous terrain and the ache in her shoulder all caught up to her. She fumbled to disarm the trap and unlatch the gate, then reset it after they’d passed through. At the door to the house, she pressed her hand against the glass security pad and manipulated the grid, entering code after code. Finally, the door opened.

  “Is this—?” Jinx started to ask, but she shook her head.

  After locking the door behind them, she led him through the dusty, sparsely furnished rooms of the house to a hallway. She found the loose floorboard, pulled it up and navigated through a whole other set of separate security routines. When she was satisfied, she sprung the trapdoor, revealing the ladder down into her bunker. She turned and gazed at Jinx, flashing him an exhausted smile.

  “This,” she said, “is my safe house.”

  Wincing against the stiffness in her shoulder, she climbed slowly down the ladder and moved a few steps through the darkness to the right. She’d just gotten the switch flipped to turn on the lights when he alit beside her. Together they got the hatch in the ceiling shut.

  All the breath rushed out of her the second the latch closed. Letting the exhaustion win, she folded herself into Jinx’s arms, giving herself over completely to his strength. His support and warmth.

  She let him hold her.

  Because it wasn’t the house that made her feel safe. It was Jinx’s embrace.

  Chapter Ten

  All the fight seemed to drain out of Aurelia at once as she melted into him. He caught her and kept her close, trying to give her back some of the strength she’d shown him all day. It was his turn to murmur “I’ve got you” as he stroked her hair.

  She breathed deeply against his neck, her lips grazing his skin with each exhale, making him want nothing more than to kiss her throat and her mouth. She’d worked so hard to get them here and to keep them safe, though. And now it was up to him to take care of her.

  Cradling her in his arms, he surveyed their surroundings. Like any basement sanctuary, the space was dark and chilly, the furnishings Spartan. The big room had been roughly divided in half, with two sets of bunk beds, a table and chairs and a galley kitchen lining one side, and rows of lab equipment and file cabinets dominating the other. A couple of closed doors stood at the far end.

  She shivered in his embrace, and he pressed a gentle kiss to her temple as he rubbed her arm, still taking care around the places where she’d been hurt. Over on the wall near the light switches, he spied a climate control panel. He should let her go, but—no. Not now. He couldn’t. He shifted her, bending to slide an arm under her thighs and lifting her against his chest. She let out a low sound of surprise but didn’t protest as he walked her over to the panel and keyed in a program he thought she’d
find comfortable.

  As he turned back toward the room, she stirred, pressing a kiss to his pulse point and sliding a hand up his chest to rest, soft and cool at the base of his skull. “I should look in your head.”

  His throat tightened. Emotion surged at the gentleness of her touch and the promise of her taking care of him, but it was all mixed with the lingering sense of dread. She wanted to set him free—free from his Three and presumably free from her.

  Unable to cope with the latter possibility, he shook his head. “Let me take care of you first.”

  Her indecision was clear in her mind. He didn’t know how else to convince her. Even though it hurt him, he trailed his fingertips over her shoulder and braced himself against her squeak of pain.

  “Please?” he asked.

  She sighed, her thoughts accepting. He hesitated, then headed toward the closest of the beds. Setting her down on the lower bunk, he lingered with his fingertips on her skin for a moment. He leaned in to kiss her cheek before letting go.

  In her mind, he saw the medical supplies in the closet behind one of the closed doors, and he nodded and stood. The pull to touch her grew with every step he took across the concrete floor. He opened the closet to find it arranged exactly how she’d shown him, and as soon as he located the kit, he headed back to her.

  He paused at the sink in the kitchen where he scrubbed his knuckles and under his nails. They were filthy with dirt, but they also glowed with contact. He’d touched her with these hands, stitched her flesh together. Felt her secret skin and made her come.

  They were killer’s hands, but they had brought healing, too. Pleasure.

  They came in and out of focus as he gazed at them, rinsing the soap and grime away. And he wondered if he could rinse everything else away, too. If he could be someone else, if she would only let him stay with her.

  He turned the water off and dried his hands before returning to her. She was staring at him oddly. Just how much of his thoughts had she been able to see? She knew the violence he had wrought already, but the thought of her learning more of what he’d done made him rub his chest against the ache there.

  Who would want to stay tethered to someone like him?

  Avoiding her eyes, he sat on the edge of the bed beside her and reached for the hem of her top. She stopped him with a touch to his wrist. He met her gaze and swallowed.

  “Thank you. For taking care of me.”

  His throat hurt as he told her, “Always.”

  Together, they got her shirt off, and he sucked in a breath at the sight of her, bare and beautiful. The night before, he’d been able to restrain his need to touch, clinging to his role as a medic, but everything was different now. He grazed his fingertips along the curve of her breast, desire uncoiling inside him.

  “Jinx?”

  Her voice was uncertain, her expression more so. He felt the conflict in her thoughts, too, her wish for contact and closeness battling her efforts to focus on what they needed to do. It was a focus he should have had himself.

  “I’m sorry.” He pulled his hand from her softness and shifted his gaze to her shoulder. The bandages there were curling at the edges, the fabric as dirty as the skin around it. His head swam.

  He’d taken her on the fucking ground.

  “I’m so sorry,” he repeated, fingering the edge of the gauze.

  Her hand stopped him, curling around his palm. “Don’t be.”

  Images of his body moving over hers made both the link and his blood flood with warmth. She’d wanted it. She’d wanted him as much as he’d wanted her.

  “All right,” he said, his voice unsteady. His gaze moved up her body, to the knotted tangle of her hair and the smudges on her face. He ran a fingertip along her jaw. “I need to get you cleaned up, though.”

  She tilted her head to the other closed door. “In there.”

  Against her mental protests, he lifted her into his arms again, grabbing the medical kit as he rose.

  The bathroom was small, all cold, white tile and efficient lines. He set her down on the counter and forced himself to concentrate on her wounds instead of on the swaths of skin reflected in the mirror behind her. With all the gentleness he could muster, he unwound the bandage.

  Beneath it, her flesh was a patchwork of bruises, the purple mottling stark against her paleness. It hurt to look at.

  “Is it that bad?” She was trying to sound flippant, but her fear pushed past the bravado.

  He focused his gaze on the line of stitches he’d sewn into her flesh. The torn edges around them were drawn together tightly, the wound nearly closed. He prodded her to twist so he could look at the exit site. That, too, was clean.

  “No,” he said, the word ragged with his relief. “It’s not so bad.”

  The regenerator he’d injected into the tissue the night before had done its job, knitting the muscle and skin back together again, and there was no sign of infection, in spite of their lack of care. In a few days she’d be as good as new.

  He took a moment to look over the other places where she’d been scraped and bruised, and he grimaced when he saw the new marks on her back from where she’d slid against the ground in the midst of their coupling in the woods. All of it was superficial, though.

  “You’ll be fine,” he assured her. He sighed and pressed his lips against her neck.

  Separating himself from her, he crossed the tile to the shower stall. He swung the door open and started the water. It was cold, but at least it ran clear. Hoping it would warm up, he turned back to her and had to swallow a groan at what he saw, his hand gripping the frame of the shower to stabilize himself.

  She stood beside the counter naked, all slim waist and lush curves, the clothes he’d dressed her in twice now on the floor. Her features and frame were so delicate, but with her hair a mess, her bruised skin streaked with dirt, she looked like a warrior. She was a painting of contradictions. And never in his life had he seen anything so beautiful.

  Still overwhelmed with the way his body could bloom with heat, he stayed there, his spine pressed against the wall as he stared at her. Her expression faltered for a second, but then her cheeks pinked. While he was trying to keep his thoughts to himself, the sheer force of his desire for her had to be leaking over the edges, filling the space of their link.

  “Even like this?” she asked, gesturing at all that naked flesh. At the dirt and scrapes.

  “Especially like this.”

  All his designs on bathing her receded. He didn’t have the control to do it without wanting to feel the heat inside her again, and she was tired. She deserved better.

  He closed his eyes and took a couple of deep breaths, then peeled himself from the tile. The air was growing heavy with steam now, so he reached a hand back under the spray, adjusting the temperature until it was comfortably hot. He stepped out of the way and held his arm out.

  She surprised him when, instead of getting in, she stopped before him and put her hands on his skin, pushing his shirt up his torso to touch his waist.

  “I don’t think—” he started, but he didn’t get far.

  “I thought you wanted to wash me.” An image from his fantasy of sliding soapy fingers through her hair drifted through his vision. He hadn’t realized she’d seen it.

  “I do. But…”

  She drew the fabric higher, leaning in to whisper, “Be naked with me.”

  Her mind, guarded as it was, teemed over with heat intense enough to match his own, thoughts of skin and touch and the completeness born from the place where their flesh and thoughts enmeshed.

  His willpower crumbled. As he pulled his shirt over his head, her nimble fingers wrestled with the rest of his clothes until he was as bare as she was. He was hard, his cock aching with the need to touch and be touched. It was all so new and yet so familiar now. She took his hand and led him into the stall, then close
d the door behind them.

  The place had not been designed for two, the space cramped, but it was all the better for that closeness. He placed himself between her body and the spray, shielding her face from it and pressing himself against her. With his hands on her hips, he leaned in and kissed her mouth, tasting her lips and tongue. His needy flesh was trapped between them, her softness sliding against him as he lifted her up and pinned her to the tile with his hips.

  And it was such a relief as she opened to him, kissing back and combing fingers through his hair, scratching at his scalp and gripping tightly at his shoulder. Her mind spread just as eagerly, and the depth of her want still floored him. Made him touch harder, delve more deeply.

  He slipped his fingers through the silky place between her thighs, listening to her thoughts for cues on what felt good to her. Everything felt good to him—her breath at his ear and her arms around his neck, the heat of her legs as they wrapped around his hips. As he circled higher, rubbing tighter at soft flesh and pressing his fingertips just inside, she threw her head back, bracing herself and clutching at his spine.

  “Good?” he asked, his mouth open against her throat. His voice was ragged, his every instinct telling him to push inside and make her his again.

  “Yes.”

  It was an answer to both questions, the one he’d spoken aloud and the one he hadn’t. Her thoughts were all of fullness and of a hard body thrusting tightly into hers—a plea, a whisper and a name. His name.

  He let out a groaning exhale and pulled his fingers from her flesh, curling his palm around her thigh to spread her, pressing her fast against the tile. He fitted himself to her opening, fit his mouth to her breath, pushed deep, and then he was inside. Flush against her, fully held within her body, hot and wet as he surged.

  Thoughts of fullness and need poured through the connection. Desire like sparks, and it was hers. Desire for him.

  His skin sang with the brilliance of sensation and with the welcome embrace of her mind as she took him in, giving herself to him. He laid himself as bare, feeling naked and open as her presence sank through his memories and his flesh. As she clung to him and kissed the water from his face, kissed his name into his skin.