Strange Case, an Urban Fantasy (Hyde Book III)

by Stewart, Lauren

  “Quid pro quo, Clarisse?”

  “Huh?”

  “Right. You don’t get out much, do you?”

  “I have all I need here.” Though he shared a body with Mitch, they were so different. Hyde had none of the softness, the love and the care that Mitch showed her. This was how Mitch had always seen himself—cruel, vicious, evil. But he was so wrong.

  “If I agree to this,” she said, stalling, still hoping she could find a way out of it, “how do I know you’ll tell me anything?”

  “Because I can’t move. Because you can. Ask whatever questions you want while you ride me. And if I don’t answer, then you’ll get off…before I have a chance to. And I want to get off. Really fucking badly.”

  She relaxed her jaw when she tasted blood, freeing her lip from between her teeth. “That’s not good enough. Tell me something now.”

  His brow and biceps tightened and then relaxed completely. She waited silently until he spoke. “Your boy doesn’t understand it because he pretends I don’t exist when he’s in the front seat. But I do. I watch everything he does. I accept him. And I want everything he has. Now it’s your turn.”

  “That’s not enough.”

  “I know how it works between us. And I remember things he’s probably blocked out. Because he’s too fucking weak.”

  “He was strong enough to keep you down for a very, very long time.”

  His mouth tightened. “That cunt, Jolie, helped. But I’ll admit the asshole’s got his talents. Just like I got mine. I said it’s your turn.”

  Her legs shook as she moved to straddle him. He was so big, her knees might not even be able to touch the mattress. Unless she was flush to him, unless he was inside of her.

  Oh God. How had Jolie done it? If she loved Mitch like she’d claimed to, how could she have used Hyde as a substitute? Eden tried to understand what Jolie might have been thinking or feeling. But the only thing that was going through her mind was that there was no way she could keep going.

  For him. You’ll do it for him. She threw her leg over him as if she were mounting a horse. To get him back, you’ll do whatever you have to. Her foot came down just in time to avoid falling on top of him.

  He twisted his hips, brushing his cock on her calf.

  “If you move again, this is over”—her voice was so shaky, so filled with fear—“and I’m walking out. Got it?”

  “So you expect me to just starfish it?” He wiggled his feet and hands as much as the cuffs allowed. “Already happening. But if you think I’m not going to move everything I can once I feel that pussy around my cock, you’re in an alternate universe, baby.”

  She cleared her throat. Her fear wasn’t helping. The deal was already struck, so it was better to go into it with strength, not terror. Control, not weakness. “The only way this happens is if you do what I say you do. And that means no moving at all.” So that she could focus on disappearing, on pretending it wasn’t happening, or maybe clenching her eyes tight enough to be able to imagine it was Mitch underneath her and not Hyde. She jumped up on the mattress before her courage waned too much, standing over him with a foot on each side of his hips.

  “I need an incentive. Tell me what you know about him.”

  He smiled up at her. “How about the incentive of feeling my cock so far inside of you, you’ll never be satisfied with anything less.”

  “Yeah, that’s not going to work. Unless you’re trying to incense me to throw up.”

  “Oh, my little peach,” he said in his cruel falsetto. “Don’t be afraid. I won’t hurt you…unless you loosen the chains.”

  “Your threats are such a turn-on.”

  He chuckled and made a sound from deep in his chest, almost like the purr of a wild cat after a large meal. “Take off your dress and I’ll tell you how it works between him and me. How different it is this time. How I always used to feel him just under my skin, wanting to wake up, but this time…” He waited, one eyebrow raised.

  She yanked her dress over her head and dropped it on the floor, wishing it was her falling there instead. With her hands on her hips, she looked down at him, watching his eyes dart all over her body, stopping in one expected place before moving to another. She inched her feet in closer to keep her legs from shaking, using his hips for support. It was either that or tumble down on top of him.

  “Well?” she said impatiently.

  “Well…now I envy the bastard. How many times has he had you?”

  If she lost it, all of this would be for nothing. And she wasn’t sure she could live with that.

  She took a deep breath and closed her eyes. Withdrawing from him, the room, this moment, she looked for the void inside her. A place that held no fear, no emotion, no doubt. Her empty place—a gift enhanced by Chastity but created by others.

  She didn’t think she would ever need it again, but it was still there for her—the protective void where she felt nothing, saw nothing, was nothing.

  “Tell me about this time.” Her voice held no inflection or fear or pain. “What’s different?”

  “This time he’s awake. And he’s deeper. So deep I don’t even feel like he’s part of me sometimes. So deep that sometimes I stop hearing his screams.”

  She clenched her eyes tighter, trying to hold on. But the grief she’d felt for the last eight days grew beyond what she could handle. It was all she could do to cut her whimper off before Hyde heard it. If he wasn’t here, she would let herself cry. A thousand tears, a million. Until what was left of her soul was completely gone.

  “Hey, wake up,” he said. Then he called her a few degrading names he probably thought were endearing until she opened her eyes again. “He isn’t gone entirely. You want him back? Stop his pain? Then maybe we can work something out. But I like being out of the pit, and letting him take over would mean giving up a lot. So I need proof you’re in.”

  “Standing here naked isn’t proof?”

  “Not enough.”

  She didn’t know if he was telling the truth, if he would really let Mitch take over. But options weren’t something she had a lot of. Mitch came back when she needed him before. He could do it again. He would fight his way back to her before anything actually happened.

  He will.

  Her quads trembled as she started to bend her knees. She couldn’t look at his erection, didn’t want to see it or feel it push inside her.

  She understood the mercy of facing away from the blade of the guillotine. When there is no escaping something, it’s better not to see it coming.

  “I need proof too,” she said. "Give me something so I know you’re not just conning me.” Her muscles burned from holding her locked in a sitting position above him with nothing to hold onto.

  No, that wasn’t right. She was holding onto something. In her mind, she held onto Mitch and he gave her strength. He would come back. But would it be in time?

  Please, Mitch. Come back to me. Come—

  “He’s here with us, my pretty little bitch. Come on down and maybe you’ll feel him too. Or maybe he just wants to watch.”

  She knew Hyde had said it as a sick, twisted tool of seduction, but his words did exactly the opposite. She froze, knocked out of the void, almost seeing Mitch’s face. She’d thought it would make her stronger, but imagining his expression as she took Hyde inside of her brought her nothing but shame.

  What the hell am I doing? In her mind’s eye, he looked furious. Maddened beyond belief that she would share something that was his, theirs, with someone else, let alone the thing he detested most.

  Weakened and miserable, she stood up and opened her eyes just to stop seeing Mitch’s wrath. His disappointment. If she went through with this, he would never forgive her. Never forgive himself. Neither one of them would ever be the same.

  She couldn’t betray Mitch any more than she already had. He might be watching her from inside Hyde right now, seeing what she was doing, but not understanding that she was doing it for him. Feeling betrayed. The thought tied
her stomach into a knot, her brain into another. She couldn’t do it.

  I’m sorry, Mitch. Though she wasn’t sure if she was apologizing for how far she’d gone or that she couldn’t go further—either way she was letting him down.

  She jumped off the mattress and grabbed her dress from the floor, disgusted with herself for how close she’d come to giving away something only Mitch deserved.

  She was his. Only his.

  “Are we moving too fast?” The condescension dripped from his words. “Should I tell you that I love you and have never seen a more beautiful ass? And that if I could, I would lay out a bed of roses and tell you all about your love and how to bring him back from the pit of hell.” His smile was wicked and made what was normally a truly stunning face ugly and hateful. “And then I’d fuck that tight ass and listen to you scream out to your God for mercy.”

  She held her dress in front of her. “Is that your version of foreplay?”

  “You want him, then you take me.” His fury was apparent in a simple exhalation. “Fine. Then if you’re too afraid to sit on it, suck it.”

  “You say the sweetest things.” She rolled her eyes, her voice gaining strength as she came back into herself. But she kept her words and her movements very calm, very controlled. “How can I say no? Oh right, like this: No.”

  As she left the cage, she ignored the curses and the names he called her. They were nothing new.

  And they were nothing she wouldn’t call herself.

  Chapter II

  The water ran down Eden’s face, blurring her vision, creating a shield against the world outside. But she couldn’t hide in the shower forever. There were things to prepare, a man to save, answers to find…somehow.

  By the time she’d washed away Hyde’s scent, Landon was back. She avoided his eyes, as if looking directly at him would expose what she’d done. It was the same reason she hadn’t looked in the mirror while brushing her hair and teeth—she was afraid of what she’d see.

  “I can’t stay long,” Landon said, scratching his eight-day-old goatee. Between that and the worn-down expression, he looked like a different man. “I’m meeting an old cop-friend. Hopefully I’ll find out if there’s been any movement on anything.” He followed her into the brothel’s tiny kitchen. “Of course, if you ever answered your phone, I could’ve told you that on my way there.”

  “I need to keep myself busy.” In a different way than Landon.

  Because he was able to blend in better than she was and still had a few contacts in the police department, he did the leg-work—talking to people and checking out the apartment Carter lived in while he worked for the people who caused his death, stuff like that. And like a good, little wife, Eden stayed home to take care of Hyde, mix up most of the injectables, and do the internet research.

  They were both in charge of the most important job—mindlessly staring at the unreadable files Landon grabbed from The Clinic’s facility. As if suddenly one of them would be able to understand the jargon and codes. Of course they would.

  Eden flipped through the files. Again. Files she’d practically memorized, telling her a whole lot of nothing useful. But she was grateful Landon had thought to take them. Eden’s blinders had been tightly focused on finding a drug that might bring Mitch back. And without the documents, they’d know even less than the minuscule amount they did know.

  She skipped over the ones in Carter’s file that mentioned her—notes he’d taken when she thought he was her best friend, her greatest supporter. She pushed aside the envelope with his confession in it. The asshole had apologized in a letter. That was addressed to Landon, someone he barely knew, instead of her. Maybe because a stranger would be the only person who could possibly forgive him.

  Landon leaned against the counter. “I’m not judging. You can hang out upstairs and stare at him all you want. Just keep your phone with you so I can reach you if I need to.”

  “Understood.” And moving on. “When I was going down the list of pharmaceuticals from the files, there was one that kept coming up.” She spread out a bunch of pages to find the right one. “Glycusaminamine-121 or something.”

  “I think that’s an over-the-counter cold medication,” he said, smiling.

  “Whatever. Anyway, it’s hardly a smoking gun, but there’s a fight over who owns it. Somebody named Danvers mentioned it in a medical journal and then a University freaked out, claiming the drug was theirs.” She ran her hands through her hair. “Of course, a bunch of labs are testing the other drugs we’re looking at. So, basically, the only way we’ll know anything is if one of us gets a PhD in Bullshit Decoding.”

  “I’m guessing none of the labs are named ‘The Clinic’ either. How many are there and are any of them in Florida?”

  “Five and no. Two are umbrella-ed under a company named ‘Malvers Labs’ in Washington and Texas. Then two individual ones in California and…somewhere in the middle. Indiana? Iowa? I wrote it down here somewhere.”

  Unfortunately, organization was something neither she nor Chastity excelled at. Too bad she didn’t have three sides that blended—the good, the bad, and the one suffering from a severe case of OCD. Shove them all together and she’d be a hell of a gal.

  “I doubt they will lead anywhere,” she said. “The drug isn’t approved for human testing. And anyway, I don’t think The Clinic would want public credit for anything they’ve done. So the chance that they’d fight to claim it...?” She shook her head. “Not high.”

  Whoever was in charge at The Clinic was a genius with lying, secrets, and doping people without their consent. Sure, their motives were still fuzzy, but it probably wasn’t to win the Nobel Peace Prize.

  “Considering how little we actually have to do,” Landon said, “I’ll try to speak to them. Maybe my detective tone will work better than your…” He rubbed his lips together.

  “My what?”

  He hesitated, as if he couldn’t find a word that wouldn’t be insulting. “Your detached one.”

  She lowered her head so he wouldn’t see her expression. He thought she was detached? Then he had no idea. Every cell in her body was engaged, filled with this moment, this situation, this ordeal. She couldn’t be more connected to its outcome.

  She wasn’t sure if it was a good or a bad thing to be hiding her emotions so well. All she knew was that as long as Mitch was in his cage, she was in hers. Solid bars around her chest and body, holding her up, making her strong enough to stand. Until he was free. Then she’d worry about her emotions.

  “Whatever,” she said, once her moment of pathetic self-reflection was over. Seriously not helpful. Examining her feelings only made her weak, just like regret and fear did. And she didn’t have time for weakness. Later maybe. Much, much later. “Any information is a good thing, I guess. Because I used up all my brilliant ideas when I suggested Chinese food last night.”

  “That was a brilliant idea though.” He gave her a pity-smile. “Did you shoot him up already?”

  She nodded. “With a much higher dose.”

  “And…?”

  “And nothing. Absolutely no reaction.” She shrugged. “Well, he got a hard-on, but that’s not new. Although he did make a sarcastic comment that I haven’t already heard a dozen times, so my fingers are crossed that it was Mitch’s creativity coming through.”

  Landon tossed a bottle of water to her. “I was going over scenarios on the way here. You know, what he’ll be like if he comes out of it.”

  “When.”

  “On the way here.”

  She shook her head. “You said, ‘if he comes out of it’.”

  He took a long swig of his water. Long enough to create a silence so dead, Eden’s mind started to drift to places she never allowed. What if he was right the first time—if instead of when? What would she do if Mitch never returned? Keep him caged for the rest of his life? Be chained to him, reality killing both of them little by little?

  “Right,” he said, nodding. “When he comes out of it.”


  She and Landon didn’t really talk anymore. Not unless it was about their current troubles. Everything had become so serious and unfriendly, and it was completely her fault.

  But it’s really hard to be light-hearted when your heart is broken. When every moment of the day is painful. When a constant reminder of all you’ve lost is chained up in the next room.

  When you have a hard time believing someone respects you…because you aren’t sure there’s anything left inside you that deserved respect.

  But none of that was Landon’s fault. So she took a sip of water and tried to shake off the angst. Because nobody likes an angsty Abnormal.

  Then she said, “So tell me your scenarios.”

  “The best one I came up with was that he comes back and Hyde is truly gone.”

  “I love it.”

  “Yeah, but the funny part would be if he was so gone that Turner was actually nice. Polite. Not sarcastic. Think about it. Without the bad jokes and moodiness, he’d be a hell of a lot easier to live with.” He waited, possibly until she smiled back.

  She tried. She really did. And she knew he was just trying to make a crack in the wall between them, but he was missing the point of why they were doing this by at least three miles.

  “I like the old Mitch.”

  “I do too,” he said quickly. “I didn’t mean anything by it.”

  She blew out a breath. “Sorry. Neither did I.” She was being too sensitive. Too bitchy. Landon was amazing, and she would end up pushing him away if she wasn’t careful. So she forced a smile. Because as long as he helped her, it didn’t matter if he didn’t understand. To not know who you are. To wake up being someone else. It wasn’t smile-worthy. Not even a little.

  “We’ll find a way to bring him back, Eden.”

  She nodded. “The real him. Not a faux version. He’s in there, Landon, crying out for help. And we’re the only ones who can help him.”

  “We’re the only people who will help him. You were right—it’s a ‘when’, not an ‘if’. I’m sure of it.” Bless him for sounding so confident, so much like she did most of the time. But being so close to Hyde had made her weak. She’d betrayed Mitch by touching his evil, teasing it. Even if intent mattered, her actions left her feeling used, dirty, and traitorous.