I wasn’t allowing myself to wonder how seriously Beth and Zara were hurt. Many people had already died. Many more probably would.
And then realization dawned on me.
Alec wasn’t trying to figure out the best course of action. He was trying to steel himself for it.
Ethan called my name, having abandoned his argument with Rick. He was saying we needed to go. I could see Tyler over Alec’s shoulder, reloading his gun as he shouted something, and I could hear Josh somewhere behind me, still yelling at people to run.
But I focused on Alec. I knew just as well as he did what we had to do, and we were running out of time.
“Alec!” My voice was steadier than it should have been, considering the mess of emotions and fear writhing inside me. His eyes snapped up to mine, the blue more intense and yet brighter than I’d ever seen it, and I briefly wondered how eyes so light could hold so much darkness.
He held my gaze, but the overwhelming anger radiating off him nearly made me shrink away. He turned toward the sky and let the rain fall onto his face, teeth grinding, then took a deep breath and looked back at me with cold determination.
He gave one firm nod, and I launched myself at him.
I wrapped my arms around his neck and pressed my lips to his almost violently, our teeth knocking. He immediately pushed his tongue into my mouth, and his strong hands grabbed me under my ass, lifting me so I could wrap my legs around his waist. He grunted when the Light started to flow between us, and his fingers dug roughly into my thighs.
Even after all my practice transferring Light through my hands, this was still the quickest and most efficient way, and we were out of time. I could already hear the pop of gunfire in the background, the first line of more assailants coming upon us.
I pressed myself impossibly farther into him and let the Light flow completely free, focusing on the lines of his hard body pressed to mine, his hands gripping me all over. I moaned into his mouth, acutely aware how fucked up it was to be turned on at a time like this but consoling myself with the fact that the arousal would only make the Light flow faster and more intense.
A loud bang near us made my eyes fly open. I was glowing again; my arms, still wrapped around Alec’s shoulders, were luminescent. He broke the kiss and looked at me with wide eyes, both of us breathing hard.
He began to shake lightly, and then, with me still wrapped around him, he dropped to his knees. His grip tightened around my flesh, then slackened, a little vein popping at his forehead.
Why wasn’t he using his ability? Had the Light transfer not worked?
And then it hit me.
“Why are you holding it back?” I yelled into his face.
Anger fell over his features again, his head shaking a little with strain.
“Alec!” I was beginning to sound frantic.
He released me, sitting back on his heels and throwing his arms out wide, flicking droplets of rain off his fingers. I held on, planting my knees on the ground and using his shoulders to balance. He lifted his head to the sky and roared like a wild animal.
A massive burst of energy flooded out of him in all directions, like a sonic boom. His ability couldn’t harm me, but I could feel the sheer power as it poured out of him.
I pressed my face into his neck. I wasn’t going to let him do this on his own. I focused on the feel of the cool rain dripping down my neck and his body under mine, muscles rock hard with effort.
After only a few seconds, he went quiet and dropped his arms by his sides, his whole body sagging. I still held on. Chest to chest, heart to heart, we took shuddering breaths together.
Around us, everything had gone still.
When the body experiences too much pain, the brain shuts down as a self-preservation mechanism, resulting in unconsciousness. With my Light to power it, the blast of Alec’s pain ability had been enough to knock everyone out cold. Only Tyler, Josh, and Ethan were still standing, watching us with varying degrees of shock on their faces.
As usual, Tyler was the first to take charge. “You guys can’t be here when they arrive. They’ll take one look at this and know about Eve and our Bond.”
Alec moved to stand, and I untangled myself from him and stood up too. I wondered if he felt as drained as I did. He draped one heavy arm around my shoulders and held me to him but didn’t meet my gaze.
The world dipped sideways and I lost my balance, but big warm hands steadied me. Ethan.
I vaguely registered them talking around me, discussing what to do, what to tell the authorities. Then somehow I was in the back of Tyler’s car, my body cradled in Alec’s arms and my legs resting across Ethan.
Then we were climbing the stairs of the mansion, a heavy silence weighing down our steps, making us all slow.
Then Alec was collapsing in the foyer. Ethan and Josh carried him into Tyler’s study and deposited him on the couch, taking his soaking tank top off.
The pulling, urgent pain was in my chest again—just like the night Ethan had nearly died—and I took my soggy, blood-soaked, mud-splattered T-shirt off too. Josh and Ethan protested, saying I was too weak myself, but I shrugged them off and approached Alec on shaky legs. I had to try. The Light was demanding contact, and I didn’t have the strength to resist it.
Josh supported me as I staggered over to the couch, the pain in my chest beginning to feel like tearing. Alec had given it all he had out there—he had unleashed the full, terrifying force of his ability, and it had taken a toll.
I draped myself over his body, the Light humming on my skin where we touched, my eyes already drooping closed. I could hear the guys bustling around the room, lighting a fire in the fireplace, bringing in extra space heaters. Someone draped a blanket over us, and then I was out.
Twenty-Six
I woke up a few hours later, but this time it was not slow and languid, as it had been when I’d awakened in Ethan’s arms. I shot up on the couch, Alec groaning in protest next to me. Ethan was at Tyler’s desk, his head resting on his forearms, and he jerked up in his seat at my sudden movement.
“Shit! The Reds!” Everything my overloaded brain had been incapable of processing earlier was flooding back, and I sprang to my feet. “I have to make sure they’re OK.”
Ethan rushed around the desk. He looked as awful as I felt—his clothing rumpled and dirty, his eyes bloodshot. It was lucky he moved so fast, because as soon as I stood, my knees buckled.
“Whoa,” Ethan said as he caught me. “Take it easy. Just sit back down, baby.”
He guided me back to the couch, where Alec was now sitting up. He looked like shit too. Dark circles under his eyes stood out against his otherwise pale face. He was probably out of the woods, but the Light inside me was still pushing me toward him; I reached over to squeeze his hand, sighing softly as the distinctive tingle of Light flow soothed us both.
“What happened?” My body may have been screaming at me to curl up next to Alec and embrace unconsciousness, but my brain was demanding answers. “I don’t remember much after the . . . Are they OK?”
Ethan crouched in front of me, his warm hands on my knees. His left shoulder was bandaged, and the sight of the clean white gauze, stark against his tanned skin, reminded me of the blood dripping down his arm . . . the men pointing guns at us.
I broke contact with Alec to pull Ethan closer, pushing up the sleeve of his T-shirt so I could inspect the bandage. His hands on my knees flexed, and he swallowed hard, his gaze focused on the ground.
“Ethan?” I grabbed his face, forcing him to look at me. He had tears in his eyes.
“Zara’s in the hospital. She’s going to be OK,” he whispered as one tear slid down his cheek.
My own eyes began to sting. Next to me Alec sat up straighter, shifting closer to me.
“And Beth?” I whispered back.
Ethan looked down, shaking his head sadly, and whispered into my lap, “I’m so sorry.”
“No,” I croaked, the tears spilling over.
“Th
ey said she died instantly. Before she even hit the ground. She took a direct hit at close range, and her fragile human body just couldn’t . . .” He looked up at me, the amber in his eyes almost molten with emotion.
Beth was dead.
One of the only people I had ever referred to as a friend—sweet, thoughtful, kind Beth—was dead. The bandage on Ethan’s shoulder was a sharp reminder that it could just as easily have been him. It could have been any one of us.
It felt like a stab in the guts. I doubled over, sobbing uncontrollably.
For a split second, I wasn’t sure where I was. Was I sitting on the couch, crying over the death of my friend? Or was I in the hospital, crying over the death of my mother?
Ethan was running his hands through my hair, whispering calming things, but I couldn’t hear him over my own grief. My body folded in on itself, trying to cover the hollow feeling in my stomach, just like in the hospital.
And just like that night, Alec wrapped his strong body around my weak one and held me together. He positioned himself behind me on the couch, one leg on either side of my sobbing, shaking form, and wrapped his arms around me firmly, his chest pressed to my back.
“You are not alone,” he said. The same words he’d said to me that night in the hospital.
I had lost another person.
I had lost her after spending a year feeling as if I’d never find another soul to share my life with. I’d found Zara and Beth, Dot and Charlie, and my guys. These people had made me feel as though I had a place in the world.
Now one of them had been taken from me. It had hit me so hard I was thrown right back into that hopeless despair I’d felt in the hospital, staring down the barrel of a solitary existence.
And once again, my honey-voiced man was there.
He moved his head so his lips were right at my ear and whispered it again. “Evie, you are not alone.”
My frantic crying calmed a little, the nightmare of my memories fading away. I took shuddering breaths as silent tears continued to stream down my cheeks, the falling drops mingling with the hair on Alec’s forearms and sliding away.
He and Ethan spoke in hushed voices, and then Ethan left, shutting the door softly. Alec pitched his body to the side and gently laid us back down. He held me, just as he had in the hospital, and I drifted back to sleep.
When I woke up again some time later, it was much more slowly and gently. We had shifted positions in our sleep. Alec was on his back, stretched along the length of the couch, and I was tucked into his side, my head resting on his shoulder and my leg hitched over his thighs.
The heavy drapes in Tyler’s office were drawn over the window, but a sliver of golden afternoon light cut across our waists. I could see tiny particles of dust floating in it.
Alec’s chest was rising and lowering gently as he breathed, but I somehow knew he wasn’t asleep either. The tattoos on his back curved over his shoulders and around his ribs, and now that my face was on his skin, I could see the scars that intermingled with the ink. The tattoos weren’t placed carefully to cover the scars; they were just there. Unapologetic. Just like him.
Slowly I lifted my hand and dragged my fingers through the light spattering of hair on his chest, stopping at a ragged scar just under his shoulder.
“What happened here?” I whispered into his skin.
“I was stabbed,” he whispered back, his voice quiet. Passive. The honey was gone.
My hand continued its exploration of the history of his pain, trailing a path over his shoulder and stopping just above his bicep. There was a smaller, circular scar there. “And here?”
“I was shot.”
I drew my fingers down the length of his arm and ghosted them back over to his stomach. At his hip, disappearing below the waistband of his shorts, was a raised, uneven, pinkish scar. Some of it was covered by a tattoo. “And here?”
“Ethan. He was still getting the hang of it.”
I let my finger trace the edge of the fabric before moving up. Under his ribs were three parallel jagged scars, raised and curving around his waist, disappearing where his side was pressed against mine. I ran my hand over each one. “And here?”
“Claws.”
I paused. Did he mean it was an animal attack? But it seemed I’d have to wonder about that forever; Alec was done talking about it.
“I hate you,” he whispered in the same detached tone he’d used to tell me about his scars.
I lifted my head to look at him, letting my confusion and hurt show.
“For what you made me do.” His face was as detached and passive as his voice, his eyes half-closed. “I hate you for making me use my ability like that.”
“Making you?” Anger rushed in to replace the hurt and confusion. It was easier to get angry than to deal with the pain of hearing my Bond member tell me he hates me. “I’m a hundred-and-thirty-pound science nerd. You’re two hundred and fifty pounds of pure muscle. I couldn’t make you do shit if I tried.”
I lifted myself over him as I spoke, my hands on either side of his head. My hair fell in a messy heap over one shoulder. His eyes opened wider as he watched me, his anger rising to meet mine.
“You don’t fucking understand anything, Eve.” He sneered at me, spitting my name out as if it left a bad taste in his mouth. I was no longer Evie—my honey-voiced stranger was gone.
“No, I don’t,” I barked back at him. “I don’t understand at all what your fucking problem is. We saved people’s lives. I refuse to feel bad about that.”
“Regardless of what it does to me, right? Regardless of the fact that it makes me into an even bigger monster than I already am? You’ve got three other guys foaming at the mouth to get into your pants and at your Light. What’s one less?”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“Forget about it,” he growled, his face twisted by anger and some other baffling emotion. He tried to raise himself up, but I had gotten really good at recognizing when he was about to run away, and I wouldn’t let him.
I planted my hands on his shoulders and shoved him back down. My movement took him off guard, and he fell back, fixing me with a murderous expression as his hands flew to my hips as if to throw me off.
But he paused.
My body had shifted when I shoved him, and my leg had moved farther over his thighs, higher up. I could feel him getting hard under me. In complete contrast to his harsh words and angry looks, his erection was pressing into my thigh. Very high on my thigh. Just short of where I actually wanted it.
Feeling the undeniable evidence of his arousal had liquid heat pooling between my legs, and suddenly anger was no longer the only cause of my quickening pulse.
For a beat we stared daggers at each other, breathing hard, and then he bucked his hips slightly, rubbing his erection against my leg. The movement was subtle yet deliberate—it was a challenge, and I was not about to back down. Not one bit of me wanted to.
I didn’t know who was more fucked up. We both had been turned on twice today—a day several people had lost their lives. But was he worse for thrusting into me, or was I worse for liking it and responding?
Purposely, I rolled my hips, grinding against him, and his mouth fell open in shock. He hadn’t been expecting me to meet his challenge.
We leaned into each other, our lips crashing together as ferociously at they had hours before in the rain, our tongues fighting for dominance. His strong hands shoved my hips so that I was exactly where I wanted to be, and I moaned into his mouth. He met my moan with a guttural growl of his own.
We were frantic, our hands all over each other, grabbing, pulling, tugging, our hips finding a frenzied rhythm. He pulled away from my lips, yanking the left strap of my bra down and leaning forward to wrap his hot mouth over my nipple. His other hand remained on my ass, guiding me.
He groped my breast, holding it to his mouth, and sucked on my nipple with the perfect amount of pressure, eliciting another moan from me.
I wanted to t
aste him again.
I pulled away, causing us both to sit up, and mashed my mouth to his swollen lips. He continued to knead my breast, running his thumb over my nipple.
My skin felt as if it were on fire, and I opened one eye, momentarily paranoid that I’d gone nuclear again. Satisfied that my skin wasn’t glowing, I reached one arm over his shoulder and raked my nails up his back. I was not gentle.
He grunted and bucked into me almost violently, sucking on my bottom lip, taking it between his teeth. He was not gentle either.
I wanted more. I wanted to chase whatever this frenzied feeling was—to forget about all the shit that had happened today.
I was only wearing leggings, and he was still in his thin workout shorts, so there wasn’t a lot of fabric between us, but I wanted there to be less. None. I wanted to feel all of him.
I shoved him back down onto the couch and started kissing and biting his neck, trailing my hand over his incredible body and down to the waistband of his shorts. I had just lifted my hips and was about to slip my hand down between us when he slapped it away. I didn’t have a chance to be confused though; in the next moment, he flipped us over, pushing one knee between my legs and pinning me to the couch with his body.
He started kissing me again as he did to me what I’d just tried to do to him. He dragged his hand over my breasts and down my front before pushing his hand into my pants.
He didn’t tease me or try to build me up. He knew I was turned on and ready for it. He groaned when he felt how wet I was, and then he pushed two fingers straight inside and started moving them.
The suddenness of his fingers inside me, stretching me, made me inhale sharply, and he pulled away, kissing and licking down my throat. The way he touched me was nothing like the few high school boys I had been with in the past, who had been as unsure of what I would like as I had been.
Alec was a man who knew exactly what he was doing. He touched me deliberately, with confidence in every movement.
It felt fucking incredible.
I moaned again, throwing back my head and arching my back. My breath was getting more shallow and erratic, and I clawed at his shoulder as if I was trying to bring him closer. As if I was scared he would stop what he was doing to me and leave.
Variant Lost (The Evelyn Maynard Trilogy Book 1) Page 31