by Rachel Caine
Patrick might be out of control, she thought in a rare lucid moment, but he was also more in control than she could have imagined. He was also deeply aroused; she could feel that in the pressure of his body against hers, and she teased him with hers, encouraging him without words spoken to go farther, deeper, harder.
It seemed to take hours before he finally let her panties slip away. His pants and underwear followed, and she’d almost forgotten how to interpret words when he put his lips to her ear and whispered, “Tell me you want this, Bryn.”
“God,” she said, and rested her cheek against the cooling wood of the door. She was shaking all over, flying apart with need. “Yes. Please. I do.”
He slipped inside her with a sudden, breathtaking thrust, pressing her against the solid surface, and she let out a low cry of pure, animal pleasure.
And then more, and more, and more, until the world shattered around them in a white-hot fury.
Chapter 6
Somehow, they found the bed afterward—a giant Victorian thing, tall and forbidding, but full of luxurious layers of sheets and blankets that felt soothing and soft against Bryn’s hypersensitive skin. She rolled on her side and stared at him; McCallister, like her, looked flushed, and his skin glistened with sweat. There was a vagueness in his eyes that she couldn’t recall ever seeing before. It looked like peace. For this moment, at least, he wasn’t on guard.
“I’m sorry,” he said, which startled her into a blink. “I’m usually—not that—”
“Don’t tell me that,” she said, and smiled. “Because it was fantastic.”
“In that case, forget what I said. I am always like that.” But he was looking at her with a trace of…something odd. “I imagined the first time to be slow and romantic, face-to-face. Not…out of control and up against my bedroom door.”
“Something in you wanted it that way. And trust me, something in me wanted it, too. I think we’ve been thinking about this for way too long.” Bryn reached out and traced a slow, lazy pattern on his chest. “You might have noticed that.”
“I might have.” He took her hand and kissed the back of it, and the softness of his lips made her ache inside, again. Impossible that she could want more just now, but…there it was.
“I hope—” She bit her lip on a sudden, strange impulse to laugh, and felt color pinking her cheeks. “I hope that wasn’t as loud outside the room as it seemed like it was in here.”
“You’re worried about your sister?”
Annie. God, she hadn’t thought of Annie at all, honestly, and that was mortifying. “I was thinking about Liam. Wouldn’t want to scandalize him.”
“A little scandal would do him a world of good,” Patrick said. “And don’t worry, he wouldn’t have heard unless he was just outside. I’m sure he’d be polite enough to walk away, in that case. Or at least be discreet about it.”
“Thank God. Uh…does he have to be discreet often?”
Patrick’s warm, slow smile sparked more heat. “Not as often as all that. Are we into the confessions portion of the evening?”
“Depends on how much you have to confess. Judging from how well that just went, I’m guessing it might be a long story.”
He didn’t affirm or deny it, just kept smiling. She gave him an irritated shove on the shoulder, but that got her nothing except her wrist captured in his hand…and then he pulled her closer, and said, “If you don’t mind me saying so, you seemed like a woman who hadn’t been properly satisfied in a long time. From the…intensity.”
Had she been blushing before? Because it felt like a bonfire in her face now. “Well, you know. It’s been a while.”
“And if I had to guess, I’d say you’ve not had very good experiences. Which is a real pity, because you deserve them.” He kissed her, slow and warm and languorous, and she was torn between the hot magic of his mouth and the teasing sensation of her hard nipples brushing against his chest. And his hand, leaving her wrist to slide slowly down her waist and hip. “So. In the morning, are we just friends?”
She pulled back, staring at him. “Why would you say that?”
“Because I don’t know. I don’t know if you want this to be…something else, or just the pleasant thing it is. You live here, Bryn. I don’t want you uncomfortable. Or feeling you owe me anything.”
“You’ve just given me the best orgasms of my life,” she said. “I do owe you.”
“I think that was more of an in-kind trade, not a gift.”
“Do you want it to be…something else?”
He regarded her with a sudden, sharp focus. “The first day I met you, I thought you were complicated and dangerous. No matter how far I go with you, it seems there’s more to find. So yes. I’d like it to be more, but I can’t be the only one to think so or this won’t work. It’ll end badly.” He said that with so much conviction she was sure it had ended badly for him before. “I’m not rushing you. Tonight is…tonight. And tomorrow you can be my platonic friend, my friend with benefits, or my lover, but they’re very different things.”
“Friends with benefits? Somehow, I never pegged you as one of those guys.”
“I’m just saying that if you don’t want any emotional commitments, I’m not sure I can totally oblige you, but I’d try very, very hard.” He looked wickedly watchful, and she didn’t miss the double entendre or the direction his hand had taken, stroking gently at the curve of her hip. “Would you like me to try?”
“Maybe, if you’re going to try very hard,” she said, and closed her eyes on a sigh as his hand moved down. “Oh. Oh.”
He did a great deal more than try, and if this was what being friends with benefits meant, she decided that she could settle for it, gladly, at least for a while. There was something dark and unromantic about the whole thing, but the benefits were…amazing.
After, though…after the second time, which was so different in tone from the first, but no less breathtaking, she lay curled in his arms, filled to bursting with a kind of peace she’d never really felt before. Her mind was still and quiet—no regrets, no criticisms, no apologies. There was just a simple comfort to it, a trust she couldn’t quite wrap her head around because she had never expected to feel this, not for Patrick, not for anyone.
Especially not after she’d died.
She dropped off into a childlike, trusting sleep, and the last conscious thought she had was, He is just not the kind of man you sleep with and stay just friends.
Bryn had no idea how long it was between when she’d slid off into sleep, relaxed and comfortable, and when she woke, but it was a sharp, focused sort of waking—not just the normal thing of rousing when a strange bed partner moves, but a tense, tingling sense of purely instinctive alarm.
It was because of the way she’d felt Patrick react. It wasn’t a slow, sleepy gesture, it was something that spoke of alerts and danger, and though he didn’t stir again, she knew he was completely awake and alert.
And so was she.
There was a crack of dim light coming through the door. The windows showed no signs of dawn; it was, according to the digital clock on the nightstand, just about four in the morning.
Bryn heard a very faint creak of wood, and felt Patrick’s hand press lightly in warning, and then move slowly off her skin without stirring the covers. His breathing remained deep and regular, and she had to force herself to try to mimic it. Something’s wrong. Something’s very wrong here.…They both felt it.
And then it was too late to try to think, or plan. She only had time to react.
A light blazed on right in Bryn’s face, halogen-bright, and she sensed the attacker lunging at her. Something sharp flashed in the light. Bryn didn’t stop to think, just moved forward, blocked what was coming down at them, then met the attacker’s rush with one of her own. The flashlight went flying in a spiraling arc that showed color, wood, a confusing whirl of shadows.…
She grabbed the intruder more by luck than skill, and held both his arms away from her body as she used h
er momentum to drive him backward into a waist-high heavy table. She expected it to be Fast Freddy Watson, her nightmare bogeyman, or, possibly worse, Jonathan Mercer.…
But it wasn’t a him at all. The cry was feminine, and in the moonlight Bryn saw a long, sharp kitchen knife fall to the carpet. There was bright blood staining the first inch. From down the hall she heard dogs sounding alarms, led by Mr. French’s deep, ferocious barks, and ten seconds later, as she fought to hold on, the door of the room banged back and the lights went on.
Bryn was grappling with her sister.
Annie struggled wildly, screaming now; her hair whipped around her distorted face as she tried to break Bryn’s grip. She didn’t look…sane.
No, no, no…This was what they’d feared, what she’d dreaded, but Annie had seemed so much better. And she’d responded to the Protocol cancellations.…
“Out of the way!” shouted a voice from behind—Joe Fideli, still fully dressed, who instantly grabbed hold as Bryn let go and backed away. He easily held Annalie and forced her down on the floor, where he put a knee on her chest to pin her as he administered a shot. It took only a few seconds, and then she went out, still as…
Still as a corpse.
He’d killed her. Anesthesia for the Revived.
Joe didn’t look up. “Get dressed, Bryn.”
She realized, with a burst of shock, that she’d been fighting naked and hadn’t even realized it. She found her shirt and pants and dragged them on without bothering with underthings, and then, belatedly, realized that there was one participant absent from the drama going on in the room.
Patrick was still in bed. He was alive, and he was breathing, but he had his hand clamped tightly over his slashed arm.
The bedding was a mess of fresh blood.
“Pat!” Training kicked in, and Bryn forced herself to slow down, push feelings aside. “Did she get the artery?”
“Yes,” he said. “Look after her. I’m fine.”
Not with that much blood outside his body, he wasn’t. Bryn grabbed up her belt from where it lay by the door and wrapped it around his arm above the wound, then yanked it as tight as possible before twisting it even tighter. “We need an ambulance,” she told Joe, who nodded and rose to his feet to pull out his cell phone. “What the hell happened?”
“What Pat thought might happen,” Joe said. “Your sister’s under Protocol. Mercer didn’t lose her; he sent her like a guided missile to kill you, or Pat, or both. Until we detox her with Manny’s new formula, we can’t break her Protocol conditioning, so I have to keep her out for a while, but we needed to be sure.”
Bryn remembered what it felt like to have her will taken away; it was one of the hidden military applications of Returné. That undocumented feature—that was what it was called, in bureaucracy-speak—was one of the first things that McCallister had asked Manny to change in the formula he’d developed independently…and the most difficult.
It wasn’t that Annie felt right about trying to kill them.…She just had no choice. She was a passenger in her own head, with no will of her own, until they could break the Protocol. Which I thought I’d done. It had been stupid. She’d fallen into the trap of her own wishful thinking.
But she couldn’t worry about Annie just now, not with Pat’s skin fading to a pale, shocky color under the olive tone. He looked calm, but there were stress lines around his eyes and mouth.
“I’d love to put on some pants,” he said. “If you don’t mind. Joe—”
“I’ll do it,” Bryn interrupted. She helped him dress without another word, and Joe kept watching Annie’s limp body as if his life depended on it. He was keeping his observations strictly to himself, which was very un-Joe-like.
“Hey,” she said, and put a hand gently on Pat’s face as he lay very still on the bed. He had his eyes shut, but he opened them and focused on her. “Don’t think I missed the fact that she was going for me first, and you got in the way.”
“I’ve been thinking,” he said, as if the segue made sense, “that I don’t want to just be friends with benefits.” It was possible he’d lost enough blood that he’d forgotten Joe was standing in the room, unable to not hear this. Bryn tried not to glance in that direction, but her cheeks burned a little. “I hope that’s all right with you.”
“Yes,” she said, and swallowed hard. “I’ve been thinking the same thing.”
“Good,” he whispered, and closed his eyes again. “Very good.”
Joe cleared his throat as his cell phone dinged for attention. Text message. “Ambulance is on the way,” Joe said, and pocketed his cell phone. “Damn. It’s way too early for this kind of excitement.”
Bryn wasn’t sure which kind he meant, exactly, but it didn’t seem a prudent time to ask.
Chapter 7
Patrick’s slice to the interior aspect of his forearm needed stitches to close the brachial artery, and then more to match up severed muscle and flesh. It wasn’t good, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as Bryn had feared. It was, for one thing, his left side and not—as Joe had laconically remarked—his main trigger hand. “Can’t shoot for shit with his left anyway,” Joe had observed. “If a barn’s attacking us, he might get a solid hit.”
Bryn could tell by Pat’s eyes that he was still doped when they rolled him out in his official release wheelchair, but only mildly, and the first thing he said was to Joe, not to her. “Is she still out?” Meaning Annie. He’d given the ER doctors a bullshit story about a kitchen accident, which they’d probably not believed but had accepted nonetheless.
“Like a hammered ox,” Joe said, as Patrick got out of the wheelchair and walked toward the sedan parked in the covered area. Bryn tried not to hover. He’d had a unit of fresh blood, but even so, he still seemed pale to her. “I let her wake up and put her on a slow drip of the new formula, but it’s going to take time. The Pharmadene standard is pretty strong stuff, and it’s not easy to erase a Protocol—you know that.”
“You left her with Liam?”
“He’s armed, warned, and she’s strapped down.” Joe paused in the act of opening the car door and said, “I’m sorry, man. I should have gotten Liam to spell me when I hit the toilet, but she’d been so quiet all night I didn’t think she’d move. I was gone maybe two minutes, tops. Don’t know how she beat the door. My fault.”
“Mine, not yours,” Pat said. “I expected her to go for Bryn first, and Bryn always locks her door from the inside. I thought we’d have time to intercept. And I needed to let her try to act, so we’d be able to verify what he’d done to her.” He sent her a half-apologetic glance. “I was hoping I was wrong, but I thought you’d need proof to convince you that I was right.”
“Well, I think you’ve got it,” she said. “And how do you know I always lock my door?” Bryn always did, even in the mansion—the habit of growing up in a large family, and living in an apartment complex where theft was a common occurrence.
He didn’t answer that, other than with a slight smile.
“Oh, and by the way, no worries about me busting in on you,” Joe said with an insane amount of cheer. “Didn’t see a thing.”
Pat sighed and put his head back against the seat, eyes closed. “You’re not going to forget it, are you, Joe?”
“Which part? The two of you naked in bed? Bryn going hand-to-hand naked? Because it’s fairly memorable, my friend.”
“Pervert,” Bryn said. “I’m going to tell your wife.”
“She’d be shocked if I didn’t remember. And then she’d check me into the hospital.”
Bryn smiled, but her mind wasn’t on the banter; it was on her sister. Annalie had been lost for months, and come back…brainwashed wasn’t the correct word, but neither was wrong, because she’d simply lost control of her body to the program. It can be fixed, Bryn told herself. It can all be okay. But she didn’t know that for certain. She’d seen Annie when Mercer had first taken her, and even then, she’d looked…damaged. Desperate. Almost destroyed.
S
ix months later, how much of the original Annie was still there to be saved? I’m so sorry. I never should have gotten you involved in this. She’d regretted it every day, but regret wasn’t helpful.
Nothing was helpful right now. She just had to wait and see how Annie came out of it. And Pat was right—she’d have to keep her guard up, regardless. She couldn’t trust her own sister anymore. Protocol instructions were wicked difficult to countermand when raised to their highest levels like this.
It was now almost eight o’clock in the morning, and as Joe drove them back to the McCallister estate, she held Pat’s free hand without even considering that she was doing so until they were almost home. It felt…right. Comfortable. After last night, they couldn’t reset the clock, couldn’t take that giant step backward, even if she wanted to…which she didn’t.
Whatever was ahead, she’d keep moving. Maybe it would end badly, or just end, period, but one thing was certain: the ride was bound to be…extraordinary. And bumpy. It was insane that she’d finally reached that breathless, intense space with Patrick, and had the world crash down on them almost immediately, but she had the sense that any relationship with McCallister was going to be driven hard by adrenaline.
Maybe he might say the same about her.
Bryn checked her calendar on her phone and sighed. “I have the job for Pharmadene this morning,” she said. “Don’t give me that look, Patrick. It’s fact-finding. It’s not dangerous; it’s just fact-finding. All the file asked me to do was go in, meet with the owner, and ask some questions about invoices. It’s nothing. It’s white-collar crime, at worst.”
“Sure,” he said. “That’s why they’re sending the woman who can come back from the dead. Because it’s not dangerous. You’re not going without backup, and I’m not in shape to help.”