by S A Gardner
Yeah, like that was the reason he was keeping tabs on me and—
It suddenly hit me, full in the face. I gaped up at her. “You knew he was spying on us!” I didn’t even need her corroboration. I just knew she did. “ Man—have you been supplying him with info, too?”
She began, “I only wanted to help—”
I cut her off. “Well, next time wait until you’re asked!”
She straightened to her five-inches-taller-than-me height, looked down on me like a stern headmistress. “You yelling at me, too?”
I was too raw, didn’t know how to stop. “Yes. You’re as yell-worthy. Dammit, Ayesha, he batted his long lashes, gave you a steamy golden look and made you his accomplice.”
She folded her arms, wrinkling her blue scrubs. “He didn’t make me do anything. I volunteered.”
I threw my hands up. Wrong move. I groaned. “Fine. Whatever. I hope the two of you will be very happy together!”
Ayesha actually smiled. I turned away before my head burst with an overload of argh.
She chuckled. “If the boy was available, I’d snap him up.”
“Boy?” I snorted again, and it came out good this time. Sure. An all-out-male, force-of-nature, thirty-five-year-old boy.
She wiggled her eyebrows at me. “He is ten years younger than me. But then, I have a thing for younger men. In fact, one particular younger man.”
What? Curiosity ripped my eyes wide open. I groaned, with pain—and realization. “Fiendess! I don’t want to know, that’s how angry I am. I’m plugging my ears and slapping on the sleep mask so I won’t see or hear you anymore. I’ll set my cell phone’s alarm two hours from now. Wake me up if Matt—”
“You’ll go home and sleep till I tell you to come back,” she said, all signs of levity gone.
“I can’t and I won’t. Matt—”
“Is stable and you won’t be any good to him if you collapse. If you do, we’ll be minus both our leaders, and I’m not looking forward to being promoted to the position anytime soon.”
“I can’t be twenty minutes away if anything happens.”
“He’s been stable for the past four hours. He’ll be okay.”
Why had her face tilted at that odd angle? Had my eyes crossed or what? I sure was decimated.
“If you promise to call me if he so much as mumbles in his sleep…” I stopped, glared, my focus suddenly working again. “What am I doing asking for your promise? You’d only break it—for my own good! Too bad I can’t break up with you, too.”
“Save all that wrathful energy for the deserving, Cali. Matt may be okay, and the crisis may be over, but the investigation into the reason behind it has only just begun.”
“Yeah. You’re right.” My heat rose again. “I hate people who are right all the time.”
“Like Damian?”
“Damian isn’t right, he’s…”
“A double-crossing, lying bastard. Yeah, I got that down pat. Now look me in the eye and tell me there can ever be someone else for you, someone else who can fit you or measure up to you like he does. Someone who can keep up—put up—with you.”
“Who knows? There are four billion men I haven’t met yet!”
“Sure. And you’d scare, burn out, pulverize, or end up killing each and every one of them.”
My very same estimation. Didn’t mean having it corroborated didn’t smart. “Why, thanks!”
“Pleasure.” Suddenly her eyes sharpened. “Can you love someone else, Cali? If you think you can, I’ll shut up about this forever.”
“Who says I have to love anyone at all?”
She exhaled her exasperation.
“Really,” I insisted. “What’s so hot about love? What’s there to look forward to, in my particular case? No home, no family, and I’ll probably wind up crippled or dead. The best there is to expect in all this is sex, for erratic periods of time till disaster strikes.” I turned, walked away. “That’s no reason to put up with the emotional and psychological hassle.”
At the door, at Ayesha’s eloquent “Oh, yeah?” I whirled around and hissed, “And he doesn’t have the market cornered on sex.”
Her serene smile looked crooked in her unilaterally swollen face. “He has your market cornered.”
I tried to squeeze my bloated lids shut. They didn’t cooperate. “Ayesha, how much is he paying you?”
“Offering to top it?” She handed me my bag of tricks and the keys to the beat-up Corolla. “I’m holding down the fort. You go rest, store up all the stamina you can. I have a feeling resolving this riddle is going to be an even tougher ride.”
Eight
I got a ride home. A smooth one as far as I remembered. I dozed all the way.
I did remember I’d been standing in our garage unable to remember which car I had keys to. Someone from the Sanctuary had taken pity on me and given me a ride. Right now, as I fumbled for my apartment’s keys, I no longer remembered who.
I ached. Inside and out and on all levels and layers in between.
And someone was behind me!
I knew who when the skewer in my heart twisted. Damian.
I forgot how to fit a key in its slot. Didn’t object when he took it from my useless fingers and did the job. I wanted inside, even at the cost of his help.
I staggered when the door’s support receded. I clung to it, tried to turn, to slam it in his face. Would have managed if I wasn’t already in the air. In his arms.
“Put me down or lose a—a…” Damn. What a time to draw a blank.
Dark satin, that mind-altering stuff that passed for his voice, poured out of his mouth. “I am not taking threats from a woman who can’t even come up with one.”
I could tell he was looking down at me. Not that I could see his face in my dark-as-a-crypt living area. Didn’t need to see him to tell his mood.
I’d yelled him out of the Sanctuary, and supposedly my life, a few hours ago. Seemed he hadn’t registered my tirade, judging by the fact that he was here. And by the tone of that hormone-messing voice. Condescending, unperturbed and, damn his soul, indulgent, too.
“You’re—you—”
“Save it, Calista. Even you can’t come up with anything to top what you already called me back in the Sanctuary.”
“You said you were leaving me alone.”
And he had. He’d taken my barrage in silence, then responded with a simple: “You want me to leave you alone? Done.”
I’d watched him turn and walk away, and had really believed him this time. It had felt like the end. Of everything. For me.
When would I ever learn?
As he carried me to my bedroom, the faint daylight seeping from the shoddy shutters illuminated his face. It had none of his voice’s lightness. His face was forbidding, tear-your-heart-out-and-mash-it-to-mince beautiful. He laid me down on my king-size, shabby, unmade bed.
“So I lied—again,” he murmured. “What else do you expect from a bastard? Which I literally am, by the way.”
He—he…! I—ack!
He’d already told me how his Colombian drug lord father had impregnated his mother, before she’d realized who he was and escaped him. Yet, it hadn’t occurred to me to come to that conclusion. I didn’t subscribe to barbaric notions like illegitimacy and branding people by the circumstances of their birth. But it only mattered if it was a sore point with him, something he’d suffered from growing up. Fix this.
I tried, only to make an incoherent mess of it. “I never thought—or I’d have made the connection, sorta, technically speaking, and never would have… But I never meant it that way—just in a behavioral sense—a generic insult—oh, you know what I meant….”
His lips clamped mine, not in a kiss, in a vise whose sole purpose was to shut me up. The darkness of my tiny, bed-dominated room deepened. Figured. Exhaustion. Injuries setting in. A mild concussion. Oxygen deprivation.
Damian deprivation, that hedonistic inner voice sighed, sank into his feel, feeding, replenishing.
I growled at it. At him. Should bite mouthfuls out of him, hand him a few choice body parts. I bet I still could if I expended the last of my reserves.
Nah. Gotta pick my battles. Ayesha had been right. I needed all my strength for what was coming. Let him play caveman.
A memory flickered beneath my lids. The night five months ago. Before Russia. When he’d come to lay ground rules for the mission. Our reunion, so to speak. Right here in my bedroom.
I hadn’t seen him in four years then, not since that day he’d gotten me kicked out of GCA and medicine in one fell swoop. I’d figured the chances of seeing him again in this lifetime were one in eight billion, and those of finding him in my bedroom were up there with those of finding the genie of the lamp.
Not that I’d seen him. Or heard him. I hadn’t paid the electricity bill. I’d been wearing earplugs. Blind and deaf, thinking him an intruder, I’d erupted in all-out attack mode, shot him up with the first drug I’d grabbed. Truth serum, as it had turned out to be.
He’d kissed me then, under its effect. Our first kiss.
Now his mouth clamp was turning into just that, a luxuriant, life-draining-and-infusing kiss as he came down beside me on the bed, flowed around me.
Did he have to be so soothing, so giving? Why not try to show me who was boss, as he had during the two years he’d molded me into a fighting/killing machine as efficient as he was? Why not give me an excuse to knee him? All I needed really, to compound my aches and heartaches—a tender Damian.
I moaned in protest. At least I thought it was protest. It should be—should…
Mental debris and shrapnel ricocheted in a dimming, expanding void, and a disembodied lament echoed somewhere far, unreachable….
So tired. Tired. Of it all. Hate it. Hate you. Hate lies, never knowing for certain—hate not trusting you, totally and unquestioningly again…. Do you have any idea what it means, how deep it goes, how irreparable it feels…?
I was plummeting through the mattress, my brain seeping from my skull. A shh, shh sound absorbed the oppression, a warm bulk of soft steel replaced my bed, beneath me, around me, stroked well-being in places that had never known it. The scent of safety and strength shrouded me. Something welled from inside me and dissolved itself on the taste of life….
I sank.
Nine
“Is it genetic?” The question came out of nowhere, the first thing that flashed in my mind the second I opened my eyes.
Damian didn’t say anything for a moment, a huge looming shadow in the dark, flickering on and off with the bar neon lights that penetrated my shutters even from five levels down.
Then he whispered, so soft and bone deep, “Are you awake?”
I didn’t answer him. He’d get his answer anyway with my next question. “Or is it against your religion or something?”
“You’re awake.” His statement was the epitome of resigned sarcasm. He moved now, sitting up on one elbow, making me realize he had a leg thrown over both of mine.
I kicked, making him remove it, began to sit up. “I mean, are you incapable of telling the truth? Any truth? Would you be compelled to lie even if you were asked the time?”
For answer he flattened me to the bed again. I started to struggle, then realized. He was only reaching over me to flick on my bedside lamp. He leaned back again, flicked a look at his watch. “It’s six fifty-six—fifty-seven p.m.”
“P.M.! You let me sleep for seven hours?”
He consulted his watch again. “Seven, and eleven minutes.”
“Oh, shut up! How could you? Matt—”
“I called Ayesha several times and Matt is doing fine. He even woke up at one point and asked if he’d been in an accident. Ayesha just told him yes, and he went back to sleep. So why don’t you? I’ll resume guard duty.”
My sullen gaze swept over him. The side light detailed his spectacular face—and a no-less-so laceration I hadn’t noticed before below his left ear. My hand, in league with my rogue inner voice, shot up, fingers whispering over the abused flesh. Matt’s doing?
Damian pressed his cheek harder to my hand, turned his lips into it, catching my fingers in gentle teeth. Longing slammed into me, impacting my body and senses last.
Oh, no, you don’t!
Jumping out of bed and out of his field of influence was the only sane thing to do. I did, stood testing my balance and power. Whoa. Last night had really done a number on me.
And there he was, reclining on my bed, vital, mesmerizing, as if he hadn’t taken a bullet near the heart just four months ago, simmering eyes fixed on me, translucent in the lamp light, yet opaque, unfathomable.
Dammit. What was he thinking? I’d lost my ability to read him.
Hah. I’d never had it. Just thought I did. For a while. Another lie he’d led me to believe. He had that way of lying by omission, by suggestion, by spewing multiple-choice jargon, letting me pick what I liked to believe. And self-deluding, besotted dolt that I was, I invariably latched onto the best interpretation. Made the situation even more tear-my-hair-out worthy.
Right now, he wasn’t volunteering any insights into the workings of his mind. It would go against everything he was, I guessed, anathema to his nature, and to his ingrained conditioning as a chameleon black-ops operative, to expose his true self. Was there even such a thing?
I mean really, how many convoluted agendas would it take before one’s personality disintegrated? Had his? Or was it just so deeply buried it would take a few lifetimes to dig it out? And would I still love the man I dug up then?
How could I still love him now?
Just end this. “Listen, Damian. I owe you for Matt, and I’ll pay you back in kind. Anytime, anywhere. You can count on me, always, in critical situations and anything professional. Personally, I already told you I don’t want anything to do with you again. So, just go now and save us both the nastiness.”
He sat there, bearing my anger, making no attempt to ward it off. To defend himself. To soothe my bitterness.
Then he shook his head, sat up. I wouldn’t have imagined he’d give up that easily. Or at all, if it was important enough. Maybe it wasn’t. Maybe I wasn’t. Maybe he was sick of me.
Fine. Let him be. Let him take his gorgeous, treacherous butt out of my bed and his disruptive, addictive presence out of my life. Save me a world of hassle and heartache.
Seemed he felt me reaching critical mass as he sighed, decided to say something before I had a seizure. “Calista, do you want me to answer? Or will it just make you angrier?”
I could swear I saw purple and blue comets shoot across my vision. Was this how people had cerebrovascular accidents?
A spastic finger jutted out at him. “Use that indulgent tone and lose your most valued anatomical part, buster. You never answer me, you just give me excuses. And promises. Well, news flash! I’m not legally bound to accept your excuses, and I’m sure as hell done guzzling your empty promises.”
“What I gave you were reasons, not excuses. Which—” he rushed to add before I exploded “—you’re not obliged to sanction, just to understand, to…tolerate.”
“I’m supposed to tolerate the empty promises, too? I’m supposed to say, Poor man, it’s a glitch in his DNA, he just isn’t capable of making a promise he intends to keep? I’m supposed to feel like a hard-hearted harpy for not sweeping this under the rug and jumping back in your arms?”
“Under the rug is where all this crap belongs. And in my arms is where you do.”
My senses leapt. All they ever wanted was to smother themselves in his nearness, his pleasures. Damn them. And damn him. Pulling my strings, dangling himself, reminding me how it had felt to be mingled with his flesh, riding his need, drenched in pleasure, inundated with satisfaction.
Emotions and flesh swelled, surplus tension spilling out on a shaky exhalation. “You and Satan are closely related, right?”
He smiled. And why not? He felt me buckling.
No. I was damned if I did. Probably
literally, too, if I let the hormone-operated female at the controls. “I don’t belong with anyone who can look me in the eye and lie.”
He shrugged. Shrugged. I thundered over, slammed that shrug down, my hand stinging with the collision into his steel mass, his face an inch from mine.
He snatched me on top of him, my head in his large hand, my legs straddling his hard hips. Both his hands pressed me harder, sinking my lips into his, my core onto his erection. He rocked against me, promising me, deluging me in readiness and intimacy. Coherence and reason and outrage dissolved on his invading tongue, drowned in his maddened, maddening groans.
Remember what he did. What he made you do. What he may have cost you. The havoc that may still be coming.
I wrenched free. Felt like I’d left a couple of skin layers on his hands and lips.
Get to the point. “How about we drop the seduction scene and count the lies? First lie—the whole point of the mission in Russia. I risk everything to save kidnapped GCA doctors when all along there is no one to save, and my GCA medical mission is just the cover for PACT’s search-and-destroy mission to take out militants and biochemical weapons scientists. Do you know how I still feel about that?”
His lips twisted. “You updated me regularly on that, up till a month ago, when you stopped talking to me at all. Reserved about voicing your grievances is something you sure aren’t.”
“Hello—ever heard of rhetorical questions? No interruptions or wisecracks when I’m counting lies.” I sucked in a burning stream of air and aggravation. “Second lie—misleading me about Jake. When I think about how you knew he was involved with the militants, that you left me in the dark even after you made sure he was their mastermind, afraid of my irrational reactions, I want to bash heads.”