by S. M. Reine
But Deirdre hadn’t been beaten down, shot up with drugs, and forced to watch people murdered only to leave before Stark was defeated.
“I’m staying here to bring this guy down. Not for you,” Deirdre added quickly, “but because he’s dangerous and it needs to get done.”
“Your tone’s changed a lot since you left the sanctuary.”
Rylie’s hands clutched at her heart, as though it were breaking inside of her chest. Her eyes were shining. “What about Gage?”
Hell of a good question.
Deirdre glanced around into the alley again. Niamh was standing by the van, talking with Jacek. They must have been about to go back to the asylum.
“I’ll let Gage know you want him home, but I can’t make any promises about what he’ll do,” Deirdre said.
“Thank you.” Rylie bit her bottom lip. “I should go. I have to meet with the OPA secretary. Did you see that Stark hacked the monitors at the town hall and played another video? He’s accusing me of causing Genesis. The press got a hold of that video, and once everyone realizes I’m still alive…it’s going to be a mess.”
“But you’re not really responsible for Genesis, right?” Deirdre asked.
She wanted Rylie to deny her involvement. If she did, then Deirdre would happily forget Stark had ever mentioned it.
But a shadow crossed Rylie’s eyes and she didn’t say anything at all.
“Oh my gods,” Deirdre whispered.
“Apologies will never be enough,” Rylie said. “But I will say it as many times as I can. I’m sorry. I will always be sorry for my role in what happened.”
She didn’t give Deirdre a chance to ask more questions.
The Alpha disappeared into the crowd.
The asylum felt even colder and more decrepit after leaving the sanctuary.
Deirdre dropped her bag inside the door of the bedroom she shared with Gage and stared at the bed, with its stained sheets and dented headboard. The room was lightless, with peeling wallpaper and warped floors. It was drizzling outside. Rain pattered lightly against the window, and the gentle tap-tap-tap echoed in the cramped space.
The group had returned to the asylum in twos and threes, so Deirdre hadn’t even gotten to talk to Gage about Rylie yet. She had been subjected to another two hours of mind-numbing boredom in that alleyway before being allowed to leave with Niamh.
Even though Gage had left before Deirdre, there was no sign of him in the bedroom.
Deirdre felt empty without him.
Niamh rubbed her shoulders gently. “Don’t beat yourself up about what happened at the sanctuary. If it was going to be easy to affect big changes, anyone would do it.”
She thought that Deirdre was depressed because they hadn’t managed to kill Rylie.
It was such a bleak assumption. The idea that Deirdre’s mood would have been better if more people had died—it was horrible.
Deirdre gazed at her friend and realized that she looked…different. She couldn’t put her finger on why. Niamh was the same bright-eyed, feather-haired swanmay that Deirdre had always known. But Niamh was trying to give her pep talks after their failed assassination.
Niamh was different, but it wasn’t physical.
Or maybe it was Deirdre who kept changing.
“Thanks.” She hesitated before asking the next question. “What’s Everton Stark?”
“His animal, you mean? I don’t know. Nobody knows.”
“Someone has to know,” Deirdre said.
“I’m sure he does, but Stark’s not the chatty type,” Niamh said. “I’ve never seen anything like him before.”
And hopefully Deirdre would never see anything like him again.
A chill rolled down her spine. She rubbed her shoulders, trying to warm herself. “Is he back yet?”
“Most of the vans are accounted for, but not his. I think he must have made a stop somewhere else,” Niamh said. “I’m sure we’ll have a meeting as soon as he gets home. He’ll want to start hashing out our next moves.”
Home. Niamh thought of the asylum as home.
Rylie had called the sanctuary Deirdre’s home.
“I think I need some alone time,” Deirdre said. She wasn’t sure how much longer she could keep herself together.
“All the time you need, Dee.” Niamh gave her a quick squeeze and left.
Deirdre only waited for Niamh to disappear around the corner before leaving her bedroom.
Gage needed to know what had happened to Rylie.
The asylum was filled with a hushed silence that made everything feel a little bit darker. Nobody was smiling. Everyone she passed looked tense, as though they expected a bomb to drop on them at any moment.
Maybe they were waiting for a bomb. Stark hadn’t gotten back to the asylum yet, after all.
Whatever happened after their failure—it wasn’t going to be good. He’d kicked Deirdre’s face in for trying to save his life. And now they’d managed to screw up Rylie Gresham’s assassination.
The retaliation for this would be far, far worse.
For now, Stark wasn’t in the asylum, and everything was quiet. Disappointment clung to the air in a sickening haze.
Deirdre found Gage lurking between two oak trees in the courtyard. He was looking up at the gap in the clouds where stars should have been. There was too much light pollution from the city for them to appear.
It wasn’t raining anymore. She ventured out to meet him at the center of the courtyard, and as she drew closer, she saw the bitter anger etched in hard lines across his face.
There were no visible wounds left on him, but he was leaning heavily on the leg that Rylie hadn’t bitten. It looked like the healer might not have been able to fix his thigh completely.
Deirdre leaned against one of the trees nearest him. “Not about to chew your veins open again, are you?”
“It’s getting worse,” Gage said, rubbing a hand down his face. “I don’t even remember what I did when I went berserk anymore. I just remember Stark ordering me to assassinate Rylie, and then waking up on the drive back here.” The question was implicit in his tone.
Had he succeeded in killing Rylie?
“She’s alive,” Deirdre said in a low whisper. “I saw her.”
Gage practically went boneless with relief. “Gods. We got lucky.”
She couldn’t disagree with that. “Rylie wants you to go back to the sanctuary. I told her I’d ask.”
“What do you think I should do?”
“I’m staying here.” She shrugged. “I won’t blame you if you go back.”
“I’m never going back there again, if I can get away with it. He ordered me to kill her,” Gage said.
“Yeah. So what?”
“So I almost did. I thought I had.” He pushed off the tree to start pacing, frustration in his every gesture. “The woman practically raised me, and being ordered to kill her still wasn’t enough to make me break out of Stark’s compulsion.”
“But you didn’t do it. She’s safe, you’re free from the compulsion, and everyone’s okay.”
Gage clenched his hands into fists. “This time. But what happens if he plants some deeper compulsion in me—some permanent order to kill Rylie?”
“I don’t think he can do that,” Deirdre said.
“Who can tell? No way. I’m too dangerous to return to the sanctuary.” He laughed bitterly. “It doesn’t matter anyway. Stark’s going to kill me. The healer told me that I fought with him.”
“You’ll have to tell him that you were out of control. Your bear was in charge. You’re a berserker—he’ll buy it. You can stay here, undercover with me, if you want to.”
“Does that even matter anymore?” he asked.
Deirdre wanted something magic to say to fix his problem, something that would convince him he wasn’t as far beyond self-control as he thought.
Even if she’d known the words to say, it wouldn’t have changed cold reality.
He was susceptible to Stark. An
d his beast couldn’t be removed.
Gage was right—he was a bomb waiting to detonate.
Deirdre ran her hands down his chest, feeling the beating of his heart underneath his breastbone. “We’ve saved Rylie tonight, but Stark’s not done. We need another plan. Something long-term.”
“I don’t want to deal with that,” Gage said. He gave Deirdre a long, weighing look. “In the grocery store, when the nightmare attacked, I saw my father.”
She spanned her fingers over his pectoral muscles. “Oh.”
“Before Genesis, there were these people called kopides—people who hunted shifters professionally. My dad spent my whole childhood telling me that these kopides would come kill us if we didn’t hide well enough.” He rested his hands on top of Deirdre’s, stilling them. “Long story short, I got bored hiding in the woods with my family all the time. I went into town when I shouldn’t have and caught the eye of a kopis.”
“And that’s when you got shot,” Deirdre said. She could feel the ridges of the bullet scars through his t-shirt.
“The worst part was that I went home and led the kopis back to my family. I was the only one who…” He trailed off, gazing at something over Deirdre’s shoulder. “Anyway, the rest of them didn’t make it.”
“How old were you?”
“Eight,” Gage said. “It wasn’t very long before Genesis.”
“You’ve probably been told a thousand times that it wasn’t your fault, huh? I’m sure Rylie woke you up every morning by telling you it wasn’t your fault and served dinner with a hot glass of sympathy every night.” He didn’t have to respond. His low chuckle told Deirdre enough. “But you still have nightmares about it.”
“At first, I thought it was a good thing that the kopis wiped us out. As far as I know, we were the last berserkers.” He shuddered. “That’s what I have nightmares about. I think of how hurt my dad would be to know that I ever thought my whole family dying might be a mercy.”
That kind of guilt was a stupid thing to carry around. It wasn’t like he wanted his family dead, after all.
And Deirdre was pretty sure that Rylie had told him that a million times.
So she didn’t say it again. She kissed him gently, even though the fists clutching his shirt were so tight that her arms trembled.
Gage’s response was desperate, needy. He tangled his hands in her hair and gripped her tightly enough that she could feel the danger lurking in his body. He was almost more bear than man, even now.
She pulled his shirt up, over his head, exposing the scars underneath. Her fingertips probed the craters. Traced around the edges of his muscles. Skimmed the surface of his smooth, human skin. Deirdre feared his bear, but she showed none of it. She put on the fearless face that she could only wish was genuine.
His abs clenched under her touch, retracting from Deirdre’s fingertips. She loosened his belt.
“Deirdre,” he breathed against her neck, hot and urgent. “Here? Now?”
It probably wasn’t good timing. They were at an abandoned asylum where terrorists lurked; anyone could walk out into the courtyard and find them together.
But Deirdre didn’t care. She kissed Gage to keep him from talking, holding his mouth against hers with a hand at the back of his neck.
“Tell me yes,” Deirdre murmured. “Tell me you want this.”
“I want you,” Gage said.
She smiled into his lips. “Close enough.”
Deirdre only pulled back so that she could shed her jacket and shirt. Gage smiled at the sight of her topless.
“That’s the bra you won from Niamh,” he said. “I like it. Lacy.”
She took his hands and pressed them to her breasts. They were full and heavy, big enough that he almost couldn’t wrap his fingers around them. “Take it off of me.”
“You’re bossy.” He ran his thumbs along the lacy edges. The thin material made those light touches diffuse across her skin. Her body heated, nipples tightening to peaks.
“I just know what I want, that’s all.” She pressed herself to him, forcing him to reach around, unclip the bra, and slide the straps down her shoulders.
His lips trailed along the exposed skin. A long, active day in a bra that didn’t quite fit had left indentations on her skin.
He bent to move his mouth down her body, kissing a hot path to her nipple that left goosebumps in its wake. A sigh escaped Deirdre. She arched her back to give him access, and he hitched her up against his hips, her back against the tree.
“Amazing,” he said, and then he sucked her nipple into his mouth, pulling the flesh out long and loose and slick with his saliva. His free hand roved her body. He was learning the shape of her full hips, the weight of her thighs pressed to either side of his legs.
Her hand slid into his waistband, curving around his length. He was hardening, almost ready for her. She stroked in a steady rhythm that matched her tongue probing his mouth.
It was satisfying to bring those low grunts from his chest and know that she was causing them. Whatever else was going on in Gage’s head, for the moment, he felt good. She made him feel good.
She wished everything else were as simple to remedy.
Gage’s warm, searching mouth made its way down her stomach, tongue dipping into her navel. Her belly had a slight curve to it; he cupped it with his hands, worshipping the shape of her body.
He tugged down her waistband inhaled the scent of her womanhood.
The look he gave her from between her legs was more animal than man.
“You’re perfect.” The compliment came from him, hushed and reverent, and it was followed by more whispers—telling her how beautiful she was, how wonderful she felt and smelled. But it was all lost in the wind and her increasingly choppy breaths.
His fingers slid between her legs, seeking her core.
“Wait,” Deirdre said.
She lowered Gage to the dirt and stood over him as she stripped her leather pants off the rest of the way. The brush of warm air against her bare hips and thighs was bliss—pleasant contrast to the fever taking over the rest of her body. Gage drank in the sight of her with obvious hunger.
He looked at her like she was a goddess.
Deirdre sank to her knees, raking her fingernails lightly up his thighs. His leg was definitely still injured. A bandage was wrapped around him from knee to hip on one side.
There was no hesitation in his kiss now. The taste of her sweat lingered on his lips. Their movements stirred the earth and filled the air with the pungent odors of the damp soil.
He had spilled his blood there only days earlier, trying to end his life. Now she straddled him and took his body inside of hers, trying to show him what it was like to be alive, and that there were still things worth living for. She sank onto him slowly, inch by inch.
Gage held her hips as she rolled atop him. His eyes were unfocused, his breathing choppy. She could feel him deep within her. It was almost uncomfortable, uniting their bodies. The acute awareness of her body, inside and out, made her too conscious of the emptiness inside of her where her beast should have been. But Gage was empty too—empty of joy, empty of control.
They were too broken to make the pieces of themselves complete each other. But for the night, they could make themselves feel just a little less hollow.
Her fingers moved between her legs as their hips moved against each other. The heat built as a blacksmith stokes his fires, filling her body with molten flame, driving her mind toward a place of white noise that was giddier than the high from lethe.
Deirdre climaxed atop him with a sound that was more a sigh than a cry. Gage watched her as she trembled, holding her tightly, supporting her through the wave.
His movements became irregular, his breathing uneven.
Deirdre lifted herself off of him before he could finish. She took him into her mouth instead. Her taste was all over him, and he was so hard, so flush with blood, about to tip over the edge.
So she pushed him the rest of
the way with lips and tongue.
Gage came with a shout, back arching off the ground.
And for a few moments, he almost looked content.
—XX—
Deirdre and Gage didn’t hurry to move inside. They were relatively sheltered underneath the trees with the landscaping forming a protective ring around their bodies. She felt no urge to return to the asylum and whatever insanity waited there.
They spooned together on the dirt, the leaves of a bush tickling Deirdre’s shins. She recognized the shape of those leaves. She reached out to brush them with her fingers. The stems were thorny. “Blackberry,” Deirdre said softly.
Gage’s face was pressed to the back of her neck, his legs curved around hers. “What’s that?”
She rested her cheek on her arm. “I was just noticing that this is a blackberry bush. I like blackberries, is all.”
He made a sound of assent, accepting the explanation. Deirdre would tell him about the blackberry bushes back home later. The ones she’d been cowering under when she met the Genesis void.
For now, the night was too nice and that subject too dark. Her body still hummed with pleasure and she didn’t want to scare that good feeling away.
Gage didn’t seem to be sharing in her postcoital bliss. He was quiet and morose as he played with her hair, rolling it between his fingers.
His problems ran deep, far deeper than Deirdre would ever be able to reach within him. She was nothing but a bandage for his self-hatred—a wound that even a shifter would never be able to heal.
What kind of relationship could they have together? Would it ever improve? Deirdre would always be reaching to Gage, offering him a hand up to sanity, happiness, maybe something that resembled love. And Gage would respond by turning inward to brood on how much he hated the berserker inside of him.
Gage’s fingers trailed down her side from ribcage to hip. “Thanks. For…you know.”
“Nothing to thank me for,” Deirdre said. “I did it because I wanted to. That’s all.”
“You’re not as tough as you like to pretend to be.”