Illicit Intuitions: Sensory Ops, Book 3

by Nikki Duncan

  No. That was part of Janus’s game. Think about that later.

  “Ava.” He kept his voice low and checked her over. A nasty gash sliced across her temple where a purple knot was already plumping up.

  Smooth. He’d taken her down to save her only to slam her head into a rock like she was a coconut he needed to crack open.

  Placing his fingers over the pulse in her neck, he timed her heartbeat while simultaneously dropping his shields to search the area. Nothing came to him. It seemed Janus had only been toying with him—a favorite method of his. Still, he’d be cautious.

  “Hang tough, Ava.”

  Fear he’d never allowed himself to feel for anyone aside from Dana crept in. Fear he’d never allowed to eke its way inside edged closer. Fear he’d never allowed to rule him settled in his consciousness.

  Rather than think too much or give Janus time to reposition for a better shot if he was still around, H scooped Ava into his arms and cut through the bushes toward the lab. The blood seeping from her head soaked his shirt and coated his skin with sticky warmth.

  The rougher terrain jostled her form against him. It would be easier if she’d only injured a leg and could move beside him or support herself by holding on to his neck. She weighed maybe one-thirty, but the longer he held her the more weight she gained.

  He ran hockey stats in his head to pull himself under control. Now was not the time to be aroused or think about how she felt against him. She was injured and would be hurting when she came to. She could easily have a concussion thanks to him. Then again, she could have been shot if he hadn’t moved quickly.

  Still mentally unshielded, he scanned the area one more time before leaving the cover of the foliage. Nothing.

  Janus liked to play with his victims. Maybe that’s all this morning was—a fucked-up game. He doubted it.

  Certain enough to risk crossing the unprotected space between them and the building—maybe a twenty-foot dash—H stepped from his hiding spot and jogged to the building. He leaned toward the door, using the hand beneath Ava’s knees to reach for the security pad. He coded in and opened the door.

  He hustled inside and turned to push the door closed. A second gunshot popped. A bullet blasted into the side of the building.

  Ducking, he reengaged the locks with a humming swish of promised safety.

  Glad he’d invested in bulletproof glass and that he’d changed access codes and installed an auto lock-down failsafe on the doors, he carried Ava down the hall to the dressing room. If anyone tried to get in without the correct code, backup locks would engage.

  The room shimmered in a red-tinged blue haze. Ava’s pain contaminated the air. His lungs shrank to the size of raisins with an inability to catch a clear breath.

  He needed to scan her. First, he needed to stop her bleeding.

  After laying her on the futon, he shot off a quick text for Dana to stay away for a bit, and then grabbed some hand towels and dampened them in the sink. Checking the clock over the door, he did some quick figuring.

  From the lab to the beach was a five-minute walk. They’d been at the top of the hill before he’d taken her to the ground. He couldn’t have taken more than a few minutes to get them inside.

  She was breathing, but the longer she was unconscious the more probable it became her injury was more severe than a bump and cut. He rung out the towels and returned to her side.

  He wasn’t calling 9-1-1. He didn’t want to deal with cops and medics; the fewer people buzzing around his lab the happier he was. Especially when some of those people would be Feds asking questions about his enemies.

  Gently wiping the dirt and blood from her head, making more trips for fresh towels, he worked until the bleeding stopped. He’d never needed to apply first aid before. He’d heard head wounds bled more than others. It was true. Ava bled profusely until, finally, on the fifth towel, he was able to staunch the flow of metallic dread overtaking his olfactory senses.

  Checking the clock again, he saw it had been ten minutes since he’d laid her down. She’d been unconscious for close to fifteen minutes. The chances of a concussion, or worse…

  His belly banded into intricately woven knots.

  Sitting beside her on the futon, he steadied himself. The redness of her agony spanned his vision like a spidery web of busted vessels, almost entirely obliterating the calming powers of the typical blue mist.

  Braced, as ready as he could be, he used his mind and fully activated the lenses fused to his eyes. The layers of Ava’s head slid away one by one until he saw into her like a full-color, three-dimensional x-ray machine.

  Below the surface wound and the bruised and busted blood vessels, he confirmed his fears. Ava was bleeding into her brain. The leak was a small trickle, but if he didn’t help her she may not wake up.

  Taking her brain bleed into himself wasn’t wise. Aside from one forced experiment… He’d only ever eased surface pains for Dana, but turning away from Ava, away from the responsibility to fix an injury he’d caused… It wasn’t in him.

  He had no choice.

  Blinking, he deactivated the lenses and had his shields bounding back into place. He hated cutting her off, but needed to prepare himself if he was to succeed. He couldn’t prepare her any further than he had with the gentle probes on the beach.

  H raised her eyelids. Her pupils were equal in size. A good sign. But she’d been out too long.

  Her face was soft, eerily frozen and lifeless, without her spunk. She might look peaceful in sleep, but somehow he suspected even then she would appear more lively. More vital.

  She needed major help. He couldn’t call any in.

  Damn it.

  Most of his life he’d vacillated between viewing his talents as a gift and a curse. But when he could help someone the outlook definitely swung toward gift. This time, if he pushed too far, the gift could get him killed.

  He’d never gone all the way in. Even partial healing probes required Dana to pick him up after the effort drained him. Connecting as closely as he needed—without Ava’s willing acceptance—was dangerous for them both. The possible side effects were fatal.

  She needed him.

  He couldn’t ignore that.

  Settling onto the floor before the futon, he crossed his legs in the meditation pose he practiced often. He rested his left palm over her heart. The beating tempo pulsed against his hand, slid up his arm and into his heart.

  Three pumps later, their heartbeats synchronized. Claiming neither his beat nor hers, but forming instead a new cadence. A cadence unique to their dualities. Dualities that may be closer to commonalities than he’d anticipated.

  He placed his right hand over her temple and closed his eyes. Channeling his energy and visualizing a wormhole connected to her mind, he lowered the first shield and sought the access that would allow him to help her.

  Flashes of primary-colored lights strobed like a psychedelic disco in his mind. Connections.

  His body to her body.

  His mind to her mind.

  His heart to her heart.

  They were connected.

  The roots of his hair tingled and stabbed as if each strand were a jaggedly frozen ice pick slicing into the fire-hot intensity in his head. Pounding and growing and swelling.

  He focused on the lightness he’d felt in the water while swimming with her. It was light that shored up his strength and offered more endurance. Endurance that may abandon him before this ended.

  He carefully lowered the next shield. And then the next. One by one by one he opened himself again to her suffering.

  Each pulsing beat of his heart slammed through his head and echoed through his body to the pit of his stomach.

  With each layer lowered, he pulled some of her pain into himself and suppressed the damage from her body into a ball within himself before shoving it into his gut to be eaten away by the acids.

  Little by little, he opened himself more and more to the gravest of her injuries and their tearing angu
ish.

  Pulsing in time with their matched heartbeats, her memories surged and swirled. He tried to grant her the privacy she deserved. He tried to slip unnoticed into the pain center of her brain. He tried not to absorb her memories.

  Snippets flashed in bleeps of sound and light. In no order or context. Most he discounted, some seemed to lodge themselves into his brain.

  Super-spy eye contacts.

  No! Please don’t. Not again. Ava moaned and curled into herself protectively as her unspoken plea cried out. He couldn’t stop now.

  He was hypnotized. Now he’s dead.

  Her mind pushed against him. Against his intrusion.

  He hadn’t meant to shoplift her memories, but he couldn’t dodge the flying snippets.

  Years of practice, of honing his perceptions to razor-sharp points, had him zeroing in, slipping her memories to the side in his pursuit of her injuries. She knew about the contacts. Considering the recent visits from the FBI and his experiences, the lenses were likely why she’d shown up, but he needed to think about that later. Later he would determine precisely how she was deceiving him.

  At the moment, her injuries took priority. He’d already gone too far with his unforgiveable trespass, and he’d get a better idea of her as a person if he waited to see what she would do next. In the meantime, he would stay close, very close, to this enemy.

  If she rejected him now…

  Hoping to ease her suffering, he dropped the final barrier between them. Vulnerable and exposed, he signaled her body to release serotonin in a few small bursts.

  She gasped and arched off the bed. Her eyes rolled behind her closed lids as she angled closer to him.

  H pulled himself back from Ava’s memories and used mental suggestion to subdue her. He worked as quickly as he safely could given the intimacy of their bond. Sifting through the bruising in her brain, he carefully pulled her injuries into himself.

  His own serotonin levels boosted. His skin hummed. His vision blurred and then sharpened. The red haze was pushed back by the blue, similar to waves washing away lines in the sand.

  The muscles in his back seized, squeezing his spine in a crippling vice.

  Her agony had knocked him back. Mini-bursts of emotions and impressions rocketing through their bodies ripped through him with a stranglehold of fears and regrets.

  His gut clenched and roiled with nausea.

  Ava gasped.

  Stars exploded across his vision.

  He collapsed.

  Chapter Five

  Ava pushed through the unnatural salve-like web of suffusing her brain and jolted upright. Silvery mist danced along the edges of her vision. Her head pounded. Instinct kicked in and carried her past the cobwebs of confusion.

  She reached for her gun. It wasn’t there. A heartbeat later she was dismayed to find herself back in H’s lab. In the room where she’d changed.

  Unarmed was bad. Worse was the loss of time.

  Her temple throbbed. She reached up to rub it but winced and yanked her hand away. What in the hell had happened? How had she gotten back into the lab and onto the futon? Where was H?

  Having more questions than answers in dangerous situations helped no one. Intent on retrieving her weapon, Ava swung her feet off the bed. Her bare toes collided with solid and slightly hairy warmth. She leaned forward. H lay at her feet, unconscious and looking more like a green Martian than the man she’d gone swimming with.

  “Shit.” She dropped to his side. Dizziness swarmed—either from the injury or the odd feeling she was coming off a sex high that left her weak. She shoved the thoughts and dizziness back and checked his vitals.

  His body temperature scalded her hands. She needed a thermometer, but he was likely well beyond the safety range. “H?”

  Blood stained his hands and shirt. Smears marred his shorts and legs. None of it seemed to be his, which indicated he’d doctored her. Talk about role reversal. She was supposed to protect him.

  His pulse was erratic, but strong. Lifting an eyelid, she found his pupils to be hugely dilated. She needed her phone to call the team for backup. To call for an ambulance.

  How had she gotten inside and what happened to him? Why was her skin tingling with awareness?

  Struggling against a rising queasiness and pointless questions, she positioned herself behind his head to lift his torso off the floor. She slid her arms under his and bent over to lift him up. She could hold her own in the gym, but he had to weigh two hundred plus, of complete, lean muscle.

  And her grip was slippery against his sweaty body, making it tough to hold on.

  A triangle of the swimsuit top shifted and showed off half a nipple—a stiff and tender nipple. What the hell had they done?

  “You start to wake up and I’m gonna knock you out again.”

  Ignoring her near nudity—wishing she could dodge the feeling of an after-sex glow shrouding her—she stood behind him and bent at the waist to maneuver him up to a sitting position. She looked from him to the futon, unsure she could lift him up enough to get him on the bed. She had to try.

  “What did you do to him?”

  Ava looked over her shoulder to see Dana blocking the doorway. Rage and fury like that of a momma lioness protecting her cub rumbled through the air. But she didn’t come closer.

  “I did nothing. I found him on the floor unconscious.” Ava adjusted her feet to keep from dropping him.

  “How did you get in?” Dana surveyed her with an untrusting gaze. Her raised brow and pursed lips as she took in the sight of Ava in the malfunctioning suit indicated more clearly than words what she thought.

  Funny, Ava would’ve expected similar opinions during her last assignment as a call girl. Then again, instead of a caught-with-your-pants-down moment this was a caught-with-your-boob-flopping-around-the-unconcsious-and-clearly-aroused-man’s-head moment.

  I need to remember how I wound up here. “He let me in.”

  “Then you couldn’t have found him that way.”

  “Look. Dana.” She shifted a leg to ease the strain on her back. “I didn’t do this to him. Could you help me get him on the bed? Grill me later.”

  “You did it.” Dana moved over and positioned herself between his feet. “Though judging from your own injury I’m not sure how much help you’re going to be.”

  “Guess we’ll have to find out.” She wasn’t sure what Dana meant by insisting Ava had injured him, but now wasn’t the time for debates. Her muscles were screaming and the pounding in her head was ramping up in volume and intensity.

  Too much more of this and she’d be the one needing to be picked up from the floor. Again, if her suspicions were correct.

  “Yeah.” Dana lifted his legs and together, with much grunting on both their parts, they moved him onto the futon. The instant he was settled, Dana shoved Ava away.

  “You wanna help? There’s a freezer with ice in the next room to the right. Get some towels, fill them with ice and dampen them. The colder the water the better.” Dana bustled around H’s prone form muttering and shaking her head. “We have to get him cooled off.”

  Adjusting her swimsuit top, Ava floundered in a moment of uncertainty. “I’ll call an ambulance.”

  “No!” Dana’s hand flew. She grabbed Ava’s arm, digging her short nails into her sand-covered skin. “No ambulance.”

  Ava’s head screamed. The added pain, while not tremendous on normal circumstances, nearly floored her. She stumbled back, breaking the contact. Her mind settled.

  Dana’s eyes widened while her brows furrowed in apologetic concern. Then again, maybe it had been Ava’s imagination.

  “Fine. But if he doesn’t improve and wake up very soon I’m making the call.” Whatever had happened outside, he had taken care of her. She would see to it he was taken care of in return.

  For now, that meant humoring the sister she wasn’t supposed to know about, so she hustled to the kitchen and grabbed three towels from the nearest counter on her way to the freezer. She la
id the cloths flat on the small table, yanked the tray of ice out and emptied the tray into the towels.

  Folding the edges up, she knotted the towels into loose ice packs she then ran under cold water.

  They would cool him off and wake him up. She would get rid of Dana and ask him what the hell had happened. Then she would make her exit and report to her team. She needed someone out there checking the area. And she needed to do it all without Dana or H finding her gun—or catching on to who she really was.

  Ava pushed back into the dressing room in time to see Dana pull her hands away from H’s head and heart. Sweat still coated his forehead and dampened his short-cut hair, but a little of his color had returned while some of Dana’s had bled away. What was going on with these two?

  “Here.” She rushed to Dana with the ice packs.

  “Thank you.” Dana sounded suddenly tired, where before she’d been snappish and strong. “Put one under each of his armpits, pressed against his sides, and one below his neck.”

  Ava did as she was told while noting the changes in Dana. She’d missed something big. Dana’s background was as empty as H’s on paper. In fact, if paper trails were to be believed, they hadn’t existed until a few years ago. Like they’d just appeared, complete with degrees.

  Ava needed to know what she was missing.

  While Dana went through her ministrations, Ava went to the other side of the wall to get a towel to wipe away his sweat. On the floor, dropped hurriedly from appearances, was a heap of bloody towels. She caught her reflection over the mirror.

  A lump the size of Texas was just over her temples with a long gash slicing through it. A gash that should have needed stitches judging from the bloody towels. Surprisingly, it was mostly closed up. Though now she understood why she had a massive headache and was fighting dizziness.

  And damn it, her eyes looked blurry like she’d just had crazy sex. Several times.

  She adjusted the suit, which had slipped off her boob, and rinsed out the bloody towels. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to be helping H. She did, but she got the distinct impression Dana preferred being alone with him. She would maintain a little distance since the other woman saw her as an unwelcome intruder.