Stripped Away

by Sydney Somers

  She knew Cass’s question stemmed from the need to change the subject when the details of her attack were still so fresh in her mind. Quinn couldn’t blame her, not when she struggled to talk about her nightmares, which now seemed minor in comparison.

  Sensing her sister’s curious gaze, Quinn shrugged, picking up her drink though she had no plans to lift it to her mouth. “Braxton and I work together.”

  Cass snorted. “So I’ve heard before.” She propped her chin in her palm. “But you can do better than that.”

  “We’re not in a relationship if that’s what you’re hinting at.”

  Cass narrowed her eyes suspiciously, her gaze probing. “But you two have gotten horizontal, haven’t you?” A knowing smile lurked at the edges of her mouth.

  Unsure how to define the steamy encounters she and Braxton had shared to date, Quinn ducked her head. She wasn’t exactly inexperienced when it came to men, but the way his touch scorched her entire system was undeniable and they had yet to finish what they’d started. Avoiding the subject seemed like a smarter move considering Quinn couldn’t stop wondering if there was more between them than just explosive sexual chemistry.

  Cass glanced over her shoulder and Braxton must have felt their mutual attention. He straightened from the pool table. His eyes skimmed briefly over Cass to settle squarely on Quinn. The intensity that burned in his eyes made her squirm in her chair.

  “About time.”

  Quinn let out a long breath. “Cass,” she began, finding it hard to concentrate when Braxton hadn’t taken his eyes off her. The man couldn’t seem to decide if he preferred to cling to his usual stoic mask reserved for all of the agents in their field office, or to pin her in place with a look that promised long nights of being trapped beneath his naked body.

  “Please. You’ve been talking about the man for months.”

  Quinn shrugged.

  “I’m getting the impression your sister approves of me.”

  She frowned at the mental intrusion and shot Braxton a warning glare. Since that morning he’d been anything but slick when he tried to slip in through the cracks. Part of her wanted to let him in, hoping he’d be able to identify what was falling apart inside her mind. The other part refused to let him see what he made her feel. At least not before she was certain how deep those feelings ran.

  He set the cue aside and leaned back against the pool table, crossing his arms. His ribbed T-shirt stretched tight over an eye-catching upper-body packed with muscle she was slowly learning the feel of by touch alone.

  A playful grin teased his mouth. “Worried I might get a peek at something I shouldn’t see?” He tilted his head, the soft crease in his forehead warning her that he was skirting the edge of Cass’s mind.

  “Like the time you invited a boy you liked over for Thanksgiving, then laughed so hard at dinner you threw up.”

  Quinn sighed.

  Cass reached across the table. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to push.”

  “Not you. Him.”

  Cass glanced back and forth between the two of them. “So what is the story then?”

  “Complicated.” It was a nice tidy description that summed it up, but solved nothing.

  “Over before it’s begun?”

  This time Quinn did finally take a drink. “Sometimes it feels like that.”

  “I can see the appeal.” Her sister’s brows drew together thoughtfully.

  Quinn glared at Braxton, making it clear she knew what he was doing.

  He offered up his most innocent smile—one Quinn felt all the way to her toes—and returned to playing pool. A second later she watched him tug his vibrating cell phone from his pocket.

  “I still find it weird that you guys thought Woody was involved in all this.”

  Quinn wished she could rule out the possibility. “He rubbed me the wrong way.”

  “Don’t get me wrong, he’s not my favorite person but I’ve never had a reason to think he would be involved in something like this.”

  “Cass, he spies on you.”

  Her sister shuddered. “Granted he’s more perverted than I gave him credit for, but helping someone try to abduct me?” She closed her eyes, her knuckles whitening on the table. “The man who broke into my house—I know how crazy it is, but something wasn’t right with him.” Her voice lowered to a heavy whisper.

  Never before did Quinn ache to tell her sister the truth as bad as she did right at that moment. The argument could be made that Cass needed to know what was out there, and at the same time all Destroyers knew the statistics. The average person did not handle the truth well—many became downright paranoid, afraid to leave their homes. After the way her sister had withdrawn so much after their parents’ deaths, Quinn wouldn’t consider the risk of telling her sister the truth until she made certain Cass was safe.

  “He took you and held you prisoner. Of course he wasn’t…right.” And when Quinn caught up with the storm demon responsible, she would tear it apart. Right after she discovered why it had taken Cass in the first place.

  She and Braxton had guessed that maybe it wanted to feed off her emotions slowly, wanted to keep Cass scared to draw it out. Luckily for Cass the creature had been stupid enough to continually leave her alone, giving her the opportunity for escape.

  “And the man’s eyes…” Cass shuddered. “This is going to sound weird, but it’s like I’ve seen eyes like that before.” She studied Quinn intently.

  Quinn brought her head up. “When?”

  Cass held her gaze, searching, then finally shrugged. “They just seemed familiar. Probably some bad horror movie.”

  “Maybe.” She shifted on her seat. “Have you ever had any nightmares about Mom and Dad?”

  “Like what?” Cass picked at the scarred tabletop, but the odd note in her voice caught Quinn’s attention.

  “I don’t know. Any dreams where Mom is crying and scared?”

  Concern filled Cass’s eyes. “You’re having nightmares?”

  “It’s nothing.” After Cass’s ordeal, the last thing she needed to hear about were the fuzzy fragments of dreams from last night that had slowly surfaced throughout the day. The images never came into focus, but she heard her mother’s voice again, promising that they’d be okay.

  Before Cass could press her for more details Braxton stepped up next to the table. “Drew is on his way.”

  Cass shook her head. “Is tucking me away really necessary? I mean, I’m clearly not anxious to go home alone while this nutcase is still out there somewhere, but I don’t need a babysitter, do I?”

  “Believe me, where Drew is concerned, you’d probably be the one doing the baby-sitting,” Braxton muttered.

  “Besides, it won’t be for very long,” Quinn added.

  “And tell me again why you can’t take me back to your place yourself?”

  “I’m going to follow-up once more with the police and as soon as I’m sure they’re doing something about this creep, I’ll be headed home right behind you.” One of these days lying to Cass would catch up with her. She only hoped her sister would understand.

  * * *

  “She asleep?”Braxton sat up on the bed as Quinn closed the adjoining door to the two rooms they’d rented. Drew would be by in the morning to take Cass back to a safe house near the field office while he and Quinn stuck around for another couple of days to try and draw Cass’s demon back to the scene. Either the damn thing had somehow come upon her randomly and had moved on once his plaything flew the coop, or it would be back for her.

  Braxton couldn’t decide what was worse—knowing the creature would get away with what it had done or that it might come back for more.

  With a click of the remote, he muted the television. Quinn flopped back on the bed beside him. She didn’t say anything right away, staring intently at the creamy swirls of the textured ceiling.

  “You okay?”

  She turned her head to look at him. “Why does it seem like that’s all you ask me lately?”

/>   Having nothing to say to that, Braxton didn’t respond.

  “She wasn’t injured in the fight,” Quinn said softly.

  “You sound surprised.”

  “The demon abducted her. She put up a fight. I was expecting she would have been cut somehow.”

  “Or hoping she’d been.”

  She started to shake her head then stopped.

  “If she had been and absorbed the demon’s dakorum, then you wouldn’t have to lie to her anymore, right?” He remembered clearly the first few months after he’d been attacked by a telepath demon on his college campus. For two months he’d wondered if he was slowly losing his mind, unable to tune out the thoughts that hovered on the air around him. Even after being recruited to become a Shadow Destroyer, he’d wished he could tell his mom or one of his sisters the truth. If only it were easy to confess something like that without it leading to more lies to hide the nature of what was really out there.

  Quinn rolled onto her stomach. “So why didn’t it? Demons aren’t exactly gentle. Hurting her would have scared her even more, given it more pleasure.” She stood and prowled the length of the room. “Nothing makes sense any more.” She fisted her hands at her sides. “Fuck, between the nightmares and Cass disappearing, weird Shadow Demons and you—”

  She broke off and swiveled around, giving him her back. “I need some sleep but I’m way too keyed up.” She dropped back onto the edge of the bed, pushing her hair back from her face. “I hate this. I hate not knowing what’s going on. I hate that…that I’m scared to go to sleep.”

  He started to reach for her, to draw her next to him, but stopped. Getting her to talk about the nightmares would be twice as difficult if he pulled her into his arms the way he craved to. “Scared of what?”

  She didn’t answer right away, then, “Cass said the storm demon’s eyes were familiar to her.”

  “They undoubtedly creeped her out.”

  Quinn gave him her best ya think? eye-roll, then frowned. “What if it means something?”

  “Like what?”

  Her back hit the mattress and she pressed the heels of her hands over her eyes. “I don’t know.” She rolled off the bed. “I just need to sleep.”

  She started towards the door, stopped and glanced at the TV. She turned around, a smile playing at the corners of her mouth. “Braxton, are you watching Dawson’s Creek?”

  He snapped the television off altogether. “No.”

  She crossed her arms, her expression daring him to lie to her.

  He slid off the bed. “I was channel surfing and that’s where I stopped when you came in.” He set the remote on top of the television.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Call me crazy, but Joey and Dawson just don’t do it for me.”

  She took a step closer, grinning now. “You obviously didn’t watch the final episode.”

  “A loss I’m sure I’ll never recover from.”

  “Is that—” she tipped her head, “—sarcasm I’m hearing?”

  He watched her smile widen, then reached out and caught a streak of blue in her hair. “If you’re really serious about posing as Cass, you know you’re going to have to cover this up, right?”

  She scrunched up her nose. “That bites.”

  “Being normal?”

  “Ah. So that’s why you’ve never gotten too close. I’m too wild for you,” she teased.

  The distance between them shortened to inches. “Yeah,” he murmured, “that must be it.” He trailed his thumb along the underside of her chin.

  She bit down on her lower lip, yanking his attention right to her mouth. “You know what they say?”

  Braxton shook his head, drawing her closer until her breasts pressed enticingly against his chest, warming him straight through his shirt. He settled his palm at her lower back, spanning his fingers to cover as much of her as he could.

  “Once you go wild…” she trailed off, her gaze lingering on his lips.

  He dipped down to sample her mouth, groaning at the silky sweep of her tongue darting out to meet him halfway. And then he wrapped his arms around her, holding her against him the way he’d wanted to all day.

  The more time he spent with her, the more he was losing the ridiculous arguments he used to believe were the right ones. Every second he spent kissing her—touching her—made it increasingly clear that ignoring his feelings only made the ache under his heart worse.

  He tipped her head back, deepening the drugging kiss that worked through his system like a lit fuse slowly trailing towards detonation. He was clueless as to how he managed to stay intent on only her mouth with every lush inch burning into him, but not for one second did he want to stop the slick rub of her lips and tongue sliding over his.

  Quinn flattened her palm over his chest. “Cass is awake.” She eased out of his arms. At the door to their adjoining rooms she paused, her slow, sexy smile driving him right over the edge. “Night, Brax.”

  She was gone before he could get out the words stuck in his throat. “Good night.”

  * * *

  Her terrified cries screeched through his mind. Braxton bolted up in bed, his own heart thumping hard as he tore off his sheet, and ran for the room next to his.In the adjoining room the lamp was already on as Cass—white as a sheet—tried to calm her agitated sister.

  Quinn’s arms thrashed against the bed far too quickly, her mutated genes about to make it clear to Cass something else was going on. He darted across the room, positioning himself between Cass and Quinn. As he reached out to calm Quinn, he ordered Cass to get her some water from the bathroom.

  She hesitated.

  “Now, Cass.”

  At his sharp tone she did as he asked. Giving Quinn his full attention, he struggled to rouse her. Saying her name and trying to physically pull her from the nightmare that gripped her mind got him nowhere.

  He cupped her face and tried reaching her the only other way he knew how. The waves of raw psychic energy snapped and flared through his mind, a frightening indication of Quinn’s mental turmoil. Images shot through his mind on fast forward.

  Quinn scared and alone. Quinn screaming for someone to help them. Quinn running from a demon with red-rimmed eyes.

  He tightened his hold, framing her face in his palms, willing her to open her eyes. “Wake up, Quinn.”

  She continued to jerk and pull away from him.

  “Open your eyes. Look at me. Talk to me.”

  Her fingers curled around his wrist.

  “Come on, Quinn. It’s just a bad dream.”

  Her lips parted. A heart-wrenching scream ripped from her lungs.

  “Quinn?” Cass stood motionless beside the bed looking as helpless as Braxton felt.

  He wasn’t sure if it was her own scream that roused her or the sound of Cass calling her name. Quinn’s eyes opened, a sheen of unshed tears glistening over the startling turquoise pools. She blinked, sat up and threw her arms around Braxton, tucking her face against his throat. Tremors shook her body.

  His insides shook almost as bad as he held on to her, afraid if he let go she’d somehow be sucked back into the nightmares she couldn’t escape.

  Cass sank onto the edge of the bed next to them, mumbling reassuring words as she rubbed Quinn’s back. Minutes bled together as he sat there with his arms locked around Quinn, finally reassured when her spine uncoiled and she relaxed into him.

  “You’re okay,” he whispered.

  “Is that a question this time?”

  “An observation.”

  She drew away slowly, the lines between her eyes tight with tension. She took hold of Cass’s hand. “Bad dream,” she explained.

  Cass shook her head. “No. A bad dream is waking up with your heart racing and needing to turn on the bathroom light before crawling back in bed. That…that was something else.”

  Quinn drew another shaky breath. “I’ll be right back.” She scooted off the bed.

  Braxton caught her wrist and gave her hand another reassuring
squeeze.

  She glanced down at their joined hands, a ghost of a smile on her face. “If you want to check the bathroom for monsters first just say so.” Though her tone strove for teasing, traces of fear still lingered in her eyes.

  “How long?” Cass asked after Quinn closed the door.

  Assuming she was talking about Quinn’s nightmares he answered, “A couple months, I think. Until the other night I didn’t know they were this bad.”

  “What are they about?”

  He shrugged, wishing he’d pushed harder to get more details.

  “Is she really okay?” Cass stared out the room’s only window. “Quinn is the strongest woman I know and I hate that she looked so—”

  “In need of caffeine? I think I’m in serious withdrawal,” Quinn said from the other side of the room.

  Braxton arched a brow. “It’s two in the morning.”

  “And?”

  Quinn crouched down and looked in the mini bar.

  “You already polished off the Mountain Dew,” Cass reminded her.

  “There’s some in mine,” Braxton offered, though it didn’t feel nearly helpful enough. If not for Cass he would have dragged Quinn into his room and refused to let her go until she told him everything.

  Cass started towards the door. “I’ll grab it.”

  Quinn stood with her back to him. “I can still hear her screaming.” Her voice was so soft he almost didn’t hear her.

  “Who?”

  “My mom. She keeps telling everything is going to be okay, then to be brave. And then…nothing. I hate the silence even more than hearing her scream for them to leave us alone.”

  “Who’s trying to hurt you?”

  She shrugged and shoved her hands through her hair, holding them at her temples. “Why do I keep having these nightmares? What’s wrong with me?”

  “We’ll figure it out.”

  She smiled weakly. “What if we can’t?”

  “Here you go.” Cass returned and held out the bottle.

  “Thanks.” Quinn folded her arms around her sister, her need to reassure her twin evident on both her face and the resulting warning of “lung piercing” from Cass.