by Abbie Roads
He released her arms and sat next her. She scooted into him, burrowing so close she was practically in his lap. Oh, hell, why not? He pulled her fully in to him and closed his arms around her. She was so damned tiny and fragile it was like hugging spun glass.
“I feel like I’m going from nightmare to nightmare and don’t know what’s real anymore.” She spoke against his chest. “What’s wrong with me?”
He leaned his cheek against the top of her head. “Nothing, baby. Nothing that time won’t heal.” For the first time since he woke up with supercharged hearing, he actually wished he could connect with her frequency and hear her thoughts. Not for himself, but for her. The urge, the desire to be inside her head to slay her fears, was a visceral need vibrating through his heart.
“Gran used to say that when we got out of there, we’d need time to heal from everything we’d been through. She said the world had kept going without us, and we’d be behind and have to work extra hard to catch up and be normal again.”
“Your gran sounds like a smart lady.” Xander owed himself a high five for that one.
Isleen’s body went still as porcelain, but her heart overcompensated—duh-dum, duh-dum. The cadence was fast, the kind of fast that strolled along with fear. He flashed through their conversation, but couldn’t fathom the reason.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, tightening his hold on her. Whatever it was, he was gonna make it go away.
She swallowed, the sound verging on humorously loud, but nothing about this situation was funny. “I’m scared to ask. Afraid of the answer. Xander—”
God. The way his name rolled off her tongue captured him. Utterly and completely. If he was being honest, she’d owned him from the moment he had found her. The pisser was he didn’t mind. Hadn’t minded one moment of sitting next to her hospital bed, hadn’t minded watching over her while she slept.
“—I’m so tired of being afraid.”
Reality check. All his pink-pansy thoughts needed to be filed in the not-now-and-maybe-not-ever bin. More than just her body needed to heal. Her mind needed to mend. Part of that process was going to be adjusting and assimilating to her new reality. The hardest part was going to be packing up the past and placing it on a shelf in the back of her mind.
“Whatever it is, just ask. No matter the answer, I’ll be right here with you.”
Isleen wrapped both her arms around his waist, gripping him like she was either bracing for a blow or worried about being pulled away. “Gran?” Her voice was a whisper of sound that no one except him would’ve been able to hear. “Is she… Is she…”
“She’s alive.” Goddamn it. He should’ve thought to tell her first thing. Showed how much he knew about dealing with people—zero, zip, and zilch.
She ripped out of his embrace and aimed her gaze at him. “Really?” Hope charged through her—a visible entity squaring her shoulders and making her sit up straighter, bolder. Her features transformed from soft and scared to triumphant survivor. She was stunning. Radiant. Magnificent. All the words of beauty he could possibly think up. He’d do anything and everything to keep her looking this way.
“Really. Gale is stable. She’s got some serious cuts and bruises, but nothing is broken. The major concern seems to be her cognitive deterioration. She’s not talking. But then you haven’t talked until today. So maybe…” He owed a two-ton-sized thank-you to Row for not being able to mind her own business or keep her mouth shut. Otherwise, Xander wouldn’t have known anything about Gale’s progress.
Sadness washed away some of Isleen’s brilliance as she spoke. “She hasn’t been right for a long time. At first, she couldn’t remember the names of basic things like food, or colors, or my name. Then she couldn’t remember things that had just happened. Then she couldn’t remember me, or where we were. Those times were a blessing, an escape from our reality. The most horrible thing, the thing that hurt beyond everything else, was when she’d suddenly remember everything. Every—” Her voice choked off, her eyes clenched shut as if trying to not see the horrors replaying in her mind.
Words of comfort seemed shallow and hollow compared to the magnitude of what she’d survived. He said the one word, the only word that seemed to make sense to him and packed it full of compassion and support and caring. “Isleen. Oh, Isleen.”
She snuggled against his chest, and he concentrated on the sensation of simply holding her. Of how her fragility made him feel strong, how her smallness made him feel large, how her touching him made him feel alive.
He’d never held a woman just to hold her. With Camille, it was about fucking—getting her off, getting himself off, and getting the hell out of there.
Bile frothed inside his stomach, threatening to roil up his esophagus. It was perverse to touch Isleen with thoughts of Camille in his head.
He forced his thoughts in a safer direction. There were so many sounds in a place like this, but just as it had been over the past days, they were in background, not all cramming into his ears and demanding his attention at the same time. Here with Isleen, he had control of what he heard, of whether to attend to it or not. And fuck—he didn’t tune in with her. Not at all. What the hell did that mean? Was she some sort of antidote to his hyper-hearing? Were they making a weird trade-off—his protection for control over supercharged hearing? As long as she was happy with the trade, he was ecstatic.
From the moment he’d found her, their futures had woven together, then tied themselves in a double knot. The only question: What kind of future was it? The fluffy friendship kind or the I-want-your-sex kind? His dick went all rah-rah, sis-boom-bah for the sex kind. He rearranged his hold on her so she wouldn’t feel his pecker poking her in the ass cheek—no telling how she’d react. No telling if she’d been sexually abused on top of the obvious mental and physical damage. A single beat of his heart pumped the urge to kill Queen—again—through his system. The Bastard in His Brain fell in love with the idea, sending a shock of electrical energy pulsing through him as if Xander had just jammed his finger in a light socket.
A powerful need to murder the already dead nearly overwhelmed him. Queen’s quick, easy death carried no justice. She deserved to suffer. She deserved to be stripped of her flesh inch by inch, deserved to have each muscle ripped from its tendon, each bone broken. The torture he wanted to put her through was boundless. Nothing could ever make up for what she’d done to Isleen.
Isleen tightened her grip on him, the action dissolving his anger.
A mere shuffling of fabric from the doorway caught Xander’s attention. His innards twitched in surprise. It had been a long time since someone had been able to sneak up on him without his ears alerting him. Damn.
Uncle Matt stood just inside the room, arms crossed spoiled-kid style, lips pinched into a belligerent grin. Matt’s plastic-surgery-made-perfect nose wrinkled as if Xander and Isleen smelled worse than a roadkill skunk on a foggy morning. It amazed Xander that Matt and Kent weren’t besties—their level of continuous contempt for Xander could’ve been the foundation for a great friendship.
“You fucking kidding me?” Anger and asshole dominated Matt’s tone. “What is it with you and your dad? A genetic anomaly that turns you both into pussies around these women?”
Inside the circle of his arms, Isleen tensed and then withdrew from him. That his uncle’s words had pulled her away from him hit the ignition switch on Xander’s anger—after he’d just gotten it under control. “It’s been a long time. Too long, probably. But you keep talking like that, and we’ll be finishing this conversation with our fists.”
“I assume you mean Gran and me, but I don’t know you.” Isleen’s voice was surprisingly strong. “Explain why you hate us.”
Isleen’s words hit the brakes on Xander’s anger. Damn. She was holding her own against Uncle Matt. It was a lovely thing.
“You’re right. We’ve never met, but I know Gale. I’ve seen the he
artlessness at her core. I’ve dealt with the devastation she leaves in her wake. And you are”—his gaze traveled from her to Xander and back again—“her granddaughter. That’s enough for me.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. How do you know Gran?”
The way Matt’s mouth fell open might’ve made Xander laugh, if he hadn’t felt his own mouth do the same. She must not have made the family connection quite yet.
“This is Matt. Alex’s brother,” Xander said.
She shifted further away from him, but continued to aim her gaze at him. “Okay, but who is Alex?” Her face was washed in total ignorance.
“You’ve got to be goddamned kidding me!” The words exploded from Matt’s mouth, too loud to be socially acceptable in a hospital. “Gale never fucking mentioned Alex. Not once?” He didn’t wait for Isleen’s reply. “Xan, if you don’t see this as the warning sign it is, you deserve the same fate as your father.”
“Who’s Alex? And what happened to him?” Isleen’s voice carried obvious concern.
Matt snapped his lips closed, Xander’s cue to explain. “Alex is your grandmother’s husband.” This time Isleen’s lips parted and an airy whisper of sound escaped. “He’s Matt’s brother. And my father.”
Her head jerked as if she’d been delivered an invisible slap. “Are you sure?”
What was going on that Gale hadn’t told her anything? “Yeah, I’m sure.”
She started shaking her head and looked down at the bedding. “I can’t believe we’re family.” She spoke the last word as if she’d just uttered the world’s worse curse.
“Yeah. I guess that’s one way of putting it.” Okay, that wasn’t the kind of response he would’ve expected from her finding out her grandmother had been married. Though he couldn’t quite say what a normal response would’ve been. He just suspected this wasn’t it.
Matt started speaking, despite her continued head shaking. “The doctor is comfortable releasing her—especially with the facility being right there. We’re leaving as soon as you sign the payment arrangement papers at the nurse’s station. Alex is already on the way home with Gale—they’re traveling via medical van.”
“Home?” Isleen’s attention snapped to Matt. “After all this time, I don’t think we have a home anymore.”
“Baby, he means our home.” Technically, not his home, but he didn’t feel like complicating an already crazy situation. “Gale and Alex’s home. The Institute. Gale must’ve mentioned the Institute. She’s still part-owner.”
Isleen’s gaze met his. There was something in her eyes, something he couldn’t name that seemed to be pleading for—for what? He was lost, didn’t understand what was happening.
Her chin began to quiver and her eyes went wet, but she blinked rapidly, fanning away the tears. She shifted away from him on the bed, out of touching range, and stared down at the mass of sheets and covers. “When do we leave?” Her voice was steadier than her chin.
“Ten minutes.” Matt turned and headed for the door, then stopped. “Reporters are stationed at the lobby entrance and employee entrance, so you’ll meet me at the ambulance entrance.”
“Okay,” she said. The word itself wasn’t bad, the tone of her voice wasn’t bad, so why did Xander feel bad like they were taking her back to the torture trailer or some equally terrible fate?
Isleen lifted her chin and aimed her words at Matt. “I need some clothes.”
What was going on? Why was she talking to the family asshole when the guy who’d found her, the guy who hadn’t left her side—except for a moment—was sitting a foot away?
One side of Matt’s top lip curled up in an Elvis-worthy sneer. “Xander’s in charge of that shit.” He tossed Xander a WTF look and left the room.
Neither of them moved.
“Baby, what’s wrong?” He scooted closer, but Isleen raised her hand in the universal sign for stop.
“I need clothes.” She looked everywhere except at him.
He reached over, opened the drawer beside the bed, and took out a set of clothes Row had brought for her. He held out the bundle. “Tell me what’s wrong.” No, that was not the sound of pleading in his voice. He didn’t plead. He didn’t beg—at least not since he was child and his dad stopped speaking to him. Since then, Xander hadn’t let himself care about anyone because this was exactly what happened whenever he cared.
Chapter 8
“Isleen. Wake up.”
The richness of Xander’s voice poured into her sluggish, sleepy mind like hot fudge. She basked in the warm sweetness of that special moment between sleep and waking, the muted crunching of gravel under the car tires a surprising lullaby.
“We’re almost home.” Xander shook her leg, his touch firm and full of reassurance. Every one of Isleen’s nerve endings electrified and stood at attention, wanting and waiting for more of him. She could feel the energy of his body colliding with hers, pulling her toward him. Only there was something wrong with that, wasn’t there? She searched her memory for why Xander’s touch would be wrong, when all her dreams of him had been so—
Alex is your grandmother’s husband…my father. Xander’s father. Which meant Xander was her grandmother’s son. Which meant he was Isleen’s uncle. That made every dream she had of him—every feeling—sick, twisted, and wrong.
Her eyes popped open so fast she nearly lost her lids inside her brainpan.
She yanked her leg from his grasp and threw her body as far from him as the car door would allow. “Don’t touch me. I just can’t…can’t…” Her mind searched for a socially acceptable explanation for her words, but no thoughts floated out of the abyss other than the scream echoing inside her head: You’re my uncle. You’re my uncle.
She shouldn’t be surprised Gran had left out that humongous detail—that she’d had a son. Gran never spoke about her daughter, Isleen’s mom, either. Or the past. Never. Not ever. Gran’s motto—her rule—had always been “Focus forward.”
“Understood.” Fully aimed at her, his face was all hard lines and sharp angles. He probably intimidated most people, but to her, his face—seen so often in her dreams—had always been a salvation. Even his scars. They weren’t angry or ugly; they were beautiful with their intricate, fernlike pattern spreading up his neck to decorate half his face.
He shifted his attention from her and aimed it out the windshield. She wanted to do something, say something, so he’d turn those gorgeous tawny eyes on her again, but that was stupid and risky. It wouldn’t take a Mensa member to see she was love-starved and Xander was her favorite food. With effort, she forced herself to look forward at the driveway leading to her new life.
Xander drove them through an emerald forest toward a rainbow of color. The woods surrounding the car were a painter’s palette of greens, from chartreuse to deepest sage. Dusk hugged the edges of the landscape, and ahead of them at a large opening in the trees, violent hues of scarlet tipped bruised clouds. A breathy gasp escaped her lips. She didn’t want to look away. Monochromatic color had dominated her existence for so long that she had to blink back tears at the overstimulation.
Emotion burned the back of her throat and watered her eyes. She swiped away the wetness before it could streak down her cheeks. “It’s stunning.”
“Wait until you actually see the house,” Matt said from the backseat, his tone slightly sarcastic and laced with a dash of admiration. At least he wasn’t being nasty.
They rounded a sharp curve, leaving the forest canopy behind to make room for the behemoth-sized house perched on the side of the hill. But the word house was too miniscule to contain the structure. The word mansion only fit because of the size. The word castle was close, but too harsh and cold to convey the whimsy of all the windows and wood.
Gables overshot the expansive second story, and a wide porch wrapped itself around the place like a hug. Plush wicker chairs and a porch swing
invited her to sit and watch the sunset to completion.
“Wow,” Isleen whispered. “This is where I’m going to live?” She stared out the window, straining her neck to take in the entire structure. Everything here seemed so large, so great, so unreal.
Xander parked in front of the massive arched entryway.
“Yep. This is your stop.” Matt’s tone carried a false lightness. “Unless you want to go home with Xander.”
“She’s staying here.” Without a word to her or a glance in her direction, Xander got out of the car, slamming the door so hard it rocked the vehicle. He walked to the drive that went on past the house and farther up the hill. His shoulders strained the fabric of his T-shirt, and his legs consumed the ground in paces so large she would have to run to keep up. That’s exactly what she wanted to do. Run after him.
All her muscles and tendons were poised, ready to chase him down and set a world record in the hundred-yard dash. She grabbed for the door handle, the explanations flooding her mouth: Your touch means everything to me, makes me feel whole and healthy and wanting so much more. You’re my uncle and it’s wrong to feel this way and I don’t know how else to not want you.
No. If she said that, she’d come off sounding like the love child of the demented and the perverted. She wouldn’t go after him. She forced herself to let go of the door.
Restrained, unused energy vibrated through her, triggering a thousand memories. Memories of feeling that exact way inside their prison and the only relief, the only escape, was when Queen had beaten the feeling out of her. Physical pain was a distraction from the mental anguish and so much easier to handle.
Isleen clenched her fists tight, so tight they shook, so tight the slender, barely there muscles in her arms strained. Before her mind could decipher her body’s intent, she punched down onto the fleshy part of her legs. Pain bloomed, a blessed distraction. She hit herself again. The desperate energy, the horrible urge to chase after him, eased. She beat her legs over and over—