“Gwen, I’m…”
…sorry for what you’ve been pulled into and my role in it.
…obsessed with you.
“No.” She kissed him hard. “Not with words.”
The surprise of her mouth and the heat it stoked in him obliterated what he was going to say anyway. Slipping her arms around his waist, she gave a little tug toward her room, but he resisted.
“Don’t I get a say in how I beg for forgiveness?”
“Maybe.” She rubbed the flannel of his shirt between her fingers.
With a deeply satisfied grin, he set her against the sink and went to the shower. Spun the knob to on. When he turned back around, she wasn’t looking at him. She stared at the water streaming out of the cheap showerhead with an emotion akin to longing. A slight tremor danced along her fingers.
He had no idea what that was all about, but really didn’t care. Not at that moment. He stalked toward her, took her face in his hands, and kissed her with everything he had. First her lips yielded. Then, oh God, her tongue. It pushed out and tangled with his, and he was lost.
They went for each other’s jeans’ zippers at the same time, fingers fumbling, lips still fused. His jeans fell down without much effort. Hers were tighter and he loved tugging them down her hips and thighs. He abandoned her mouth and dragged his tongue over her newly revealed skin. He left her underwear and T-shirt on, though, scooped her up into his arms, and deposited her in the steaming shower. Hurriedly he worked on the buttons of his flannel, whipped it to the side, then stopped in his tracks.
Gwen stood under the fall of water, drenched T-shirt plastered to her chest and waist, little white underwear gone entirely see-through. He shoved down his boxer briefs and stepped into the shower, immediately going to his knees, because that was where the sight of her sent him.
He loved the feel of the wet, tight fabric over her body, and he ran his hands everywhere until he’d had his fill. Then she needed to be naked. By the drop of her lower lip and the distant focus to her eyes, she needed skin on skin as badly as he. He peeled off her shirt and it landed with a plop somewhere behind him. He replaced the cotton with his tongue, taking a delicious nipple into his mouth.
She clung to his head. Water streamed between her fingers and down his face, mixing with the moisture of his mouth on her flesh.
Curving his hands around her divine ass, he pulled down her underwear and slid his hand into the slippery wetness so different from what the shower gave. She started to shake, to cry out, then bit her lip to keep the sound inside.
He’d watched her come twice already. He desperately wanted to hear her, too, but not in this house. Never here.
He leaned back, watching her with heavy eyes as he stroked her with one hand, pushed inside her with the other. Only their second time together and he could already read her body like a book. The water seemed to hug her as it streamed down her undulating body. She was riding his hands, getting ready to burst, and it was utterly beautiful…but he stopped just short of the goal. Her eyelids flickered open in frustration.
“Turn around,” he murmured.
Dazed, she swiveled slowly. He rocked to his feet.
“Hands on the wall.”
Not only did she do that, stretching high and wide, but she also arched her back. The most beautiful of shapes. The most perfect combination of lines and curves. He dragged a languid, worshipful hand down her back, from neck to ass.
He covered her from behind, his chest to her back, and let his mouth devour the sensitive place below her ear. His hand curled around her thigh and slipped into her from the front. Just for a second. Then he withdrew and replaced the pressure with his cock. Pushed against her, then into her. That quick, that amazing.
She moaned, long and low.
“Shhh,” he said with a smile.
She buried her mouth in the crook of her elbow as he started to move inside her. Slowly at first, paying attention to every millimeter of friction she gave him. Deep, powerful strokes that shoved her forward so her tits touched the tile.
“Is this the kind of apology you wanted?” he said in her ear.
She looked over her shoulder and he took her mouth that way.
“Harder,” she said against his lips.
His body complied before his brain processed the simple word. She must have been seriously primed, because she came so quickly he wasn’t prepared when she shuddered and her legs started to go.
He wrapped an arm around her waist to keep her up. The fingers of his other hand dug into her hip as though he was afraid to lose her. Which he was.
His own orgasm rocketed through him, sending him forward, sagging against her back. The force of it stole bits of his soul and presented them to her as a gift. She accepted them with open arms and he knew his soul was better off in her care than his own.
He kept coming, little aftershocks licking his spine and making his extremities go numb. When they all dissipated, he pulled out, flipped her around, trapped her on the tile wall, and kissed her strongly—so strongly that when those little parts of his soul traveled back into his body, he could tell they were markedly better for having come in contact with her.
They kissed so long she started to shiver and her smooth skin transformed to a bristling mass of goose bumps. Unknowingly, he’d pushed her against the shower knob and had turned off the water.
He reached for a towel, wrapped it around her body, and pulled her to him again. She snaked her arms around his neck—his favorite way she touched him—and whispered, “Apology accepted.”
“I’m willing to do more penance.”
She ran her hands over his hairless scalp, brushing off droplets. Though they teased each other, neither one of them smiled, and it made his heart ache. She kissed him once. Swift and sweet.
“Dry me off and take me to bed,” she said. “Your bed.”
He slipped a hand between her legs. “I don’t want you dry.”
TWENTY-SEVEN
Gwen clung to this moment, because in the blink of an eye it could be gone. Reed didn’t think he was good at handling the dual personalities he claimed to need. She thought the opposite; he was too good. But she knew it had to be that way.
The Tedrans could return any minute. Now, however, she’d stay locked in his arms, her body curled into his, his warm breath on the back of her neck. He pushed aside her hair and kissed her skin as though it were her mouth, his tongue finding every single point of pleasure.
The sun was setting. Through the window, mauve and gold streaks painted the sky. It was too easy to get lost in this, to think they had days and nights and days of being able to lie naked together. For now, she would. She’d concentrate on the solidity of his body contradicted by the softness of his touch. The low tones of his voice.
“This part of you”—his fingers traced her collarbone—“it’s lovely. Don’t know why I like it so much.”
“That’s sort of odd, considering what else you currently have access to.”
He smiled and pressed his mouth to her skin again. “About this morning…”
“There’s no need,” she replied. “Everything you said was true. I hate this. You hate this.”
“So you’re saying the shower apology wasn’t needed? Well, that was half an hour I’ll never get back.”
She laughed, but its strain was painfully obvious.
“What I hate the most,” he said, “is being two people with you when I only want to show you one.”
At first that made her angry. That’s what he hated the most? Then she considered what he’d witnessed so far. Nora hadn’t physically harmed her in any way. The Tedrans kept her locked in a fancy house on a beautiful lake. They made Reed take her to a weird cabin and she came out unscathed. To him, Gwen could be nothing more than an errand girl. He knew nothing about the real danger because he couldn’t know anything. To him, she was safe because he was always there with her.
Things couldn’t be farther from the truth, and it sent a sick f
eeling rolling through her belly.
“You’ve seen the real me, Gwen. I can’t remember the last person who has, besides my family.”
“Person? Or woman?”
He paused. “Either.”
She didn’t have to look at him to see his vulnerability, but she turned in his arms anyway. The sight of him—bald head resting on his big biceps—made her gasp. A melancholy smile touched his lips, an even sadder one in his blue eyes.
“You really are beautiful,” he whispered, “do you know that?”
The words affected her more than they probably should have.
“That’s a tough one to answer. Say no and I’m fishing for compliments. Say yes and I’m conceited.”
“I’m telling you then. You really are.”
Warmth spread through her body as unguarded flame. He inched closer, touched his mouth to hers.
“I like how you look after I kiss you.” He raised a hand, fingers framing but not touching her face, as though he were examining a painting.
“Really?”
“I like where my chin scratches yours. Your lips swell, turn this bright red. Their edges blur. When we stop, you get this look in your eye, like…surrender.”
He could make her shiver without touching her. “I wonder why.”
Reed slid a hand onto the curve of her hip and just let it rest there. Possessive but gentle. It wasn’t an overtly sexual gesture, not even meant to seduce, but she felt the passion start to coil inside her, widening and strengthening as it circled up. Then, underneath, rose a great wave of something else. Something far more potent than mere desire. It filled her body with fiery need and spread out through her veins until it reached her heart.
She sucked in a breath, shocked as all hell.
Dangerous. This man was the definition of temporary. He had a deadline stamped on him as plain as the black lines covering his torso.
So did she.
On her hip, his hand closed hard then opened, as if he, too, had just shared in her surprise. As though he were trying to tether her to him, then let her go. Claim and release. Claim and release.
They said nothing for a very, very long time. Outside, the sun disappeared. She was glad for the deepening darkness because his presence, physically surrounding her and emotionally invading her, dangled her over the edge of a bottomless ravine. If she fell, there was no climbing out. And she wasn’t sure she’d want to. The ride down would be the scariest thing she’d ever experienced, but she’d never want it to end. And that frightened her most of all.
His hand suddenly stopped moving on her hip. His whole body tensed.
“What?” She tried to sit up, intent on lunging for her clothes then stumbling back into her bedroom before Nora or Xavier burst in.
But Reed pushed her onto her back, his great, decorated chest coming over her.
“Gwen.” He kissed her delicately.
Something shifted in the space between them. Something monumental. She felt it as strongly as she felt his body on hers.
“When this is all over,” he whispered, “I want to take you home with me.”
His home. That city he refused to name.
When this is all over…
Her heart stumbled. When it finally recovered its rhythm, she slid her hands up his chest, tracing random vines with her fingertips. Dim light from the window settled like dust into the hard angles of his beautiful body.
“The something-like-that boyfriend. Will you go back to him?”
Unexpected tears pricked at her eyes but she repressed them. “That was over the moment Nora told me what this was all about.”
Reed exhaled in obvious relief. There was a little tremble to his breath and it got to her. The tears gained some ground.
“I want to show you where I live,” he said. “I think you’d like it. When you asked me where it was, I wanted to tell you. It’s always been easy to lie about it, but not to you.”
“Scared to trust me?”
He bent to touch his forehead to hers. “Scared of how I feel about you.”
If the growing darkness had given him courage to ask such a thing, it gave her the courage to cry over him in his presence. She felt the tears leak out and sniffled.
“Hey,” he said, wiping them away with his thumbs. “If things are rough for you when this is over, I can…I can make you disappear. I can make us disappear. I’m kind of good like that.”
He laughed nervously, which brought on a new rush of silent tears.
“I know it’s strange to hear. Hell, it’s beyond strange to say. It doesn’t have to be next week or even next month. It could be next year, though the wait might kill me. Just as long as you come. There’s something about us, Gwen. I’m not ready to let it go.”
She wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him to her. Hard. She kept shifting her grip, because no way to hold him was strong or tight enough. He’d just told her exactly what she didn’t know she wanted to hear, and she could extract no joy from it.
She felt him exhale. Felt him smile against her neck. Oh, God. He thought she’d just agreed.
“Reed.” She pushed against him. “It can’t happen.”
It destroyed her to say it.
He stiffened, his chest halting mid-breath. He rolled off her. Wait, she was dying to say. I didn’t mean that. He threw his legs over the side of the bed and sat there, elbows to knees. Pale light lay a white blanket across his broad shoulders, bunched near his ears.
“I shouldn’t have said anything,” he said to the floor.
She owed him an explanation. By opening his heart and translating what it said, he’d earned a reason. But she couldn’t give him one.
He feared the Tedrans would kill her. He’d stayed on to make sure they didn’t, but he didn’t know that what they had planned for her was worse than death. He could never know. He had to go on believing in his system of checks and balances. He had to think that what he thought he knew about Adine would save his ass. If he knew his information was worthless, that Gwen really was in danger, he’d turn on the Tedrans so fast they’d bring up the U.S. government on speed dial and all would be lost.
Both he and Nora thought they held the better hand, and Gwen was relying on that stasis. Any disturbance in the current waters would upset the progress she’d made with Genesai. Any disturbance could destroy her chance to formulate her own plan. Any disturbance could set Nora off.
Besides, even if Gwen were to live through this and her culture retained its power, she couldn’t ever be with a Primary.
None of it mattered anyway. If Reed learned who and what Gwen was, he’d take back all he just said and run the other way. She didn’t think her heart would survive that.
Crawling across the bed, she slipped her arms around his waist and laid her head against his strong back. The need to constantly touch him was more potent than a heroin itch. Another name, Johnny Einhoven, threaded its way through the vines just beyond her nose. She wanted to know every fraction of every inch of his tattoo. What it all meant to him. How it had shaped him.
She never would, though, and she had to accept that sooner rather than later.
“I want to go with you. I want you to make us disappear,” she said. He tilted back his head, exhaled, and slid his hands over hers. “That’s no more crazy than you asking. It just can’t happen.”
“I understand. You don’t have to say any more.”
His watch jolted alive. When he raised his wrist, she saw the message, plain as day.
Bring her to the north garden. NOW.
The tiny garden north of the garage abutted a steep rise of rock that extended out into the water and became the promontory. A circular, brick path surrounded a dry fountain made of a pyramid of stones. It reminded Gwen of the enchanted fountain at Company HQ, but without the water running over it, it looked incomplete and lonely and made her long for her power.
Xavier stood on the far side of the fountain, next to a patch of blooming mums intermixed with wither
ing plants at the end of their season. Small solar lamps threw weak circles of light around the little garden.
Reed took up position by the door into the house, leaning against the wall and staring out to the lake. Gwen walked to Xavier, who watched her approach with his arms behind his back. They hadn’t been alone since the day he’d bared himself to her in the Plant.
He looked as cold and dry as the fountain.
“Are we waiting for Nora?” she asked Xavier in Tedranish.
“No.”
“You called me out here?”
He just stared. She flashed a worried look at the door. At Reed. Too late she realized her mistake.
Xavier stepped between them, filling her vision. Accusatory eyes bored into her. “Why are you looking at him?”
“I wasn’t…I just thought…where’s Nora?” What the hell was going on? Was he accusing her of something? Or was he just trying to make her squirm?
“Still at the Plant. I came back with Adine. It’s a mess there. The Tedrans…she’s trying to reassure them, but it’s hard to work around the guards’ shifts and they have days, hours even, to understand when I had months…” He shook his shaggy head to clear his mumbling. “Tell me you spoke to Genesai.”
She lied. She lied even as Genesai’s language bubbled and grew inside her brain, and the bold strokes of his written words danced in her mind’s eye. Xavier listened to it all with an unreadable face.
She had no plan of her own yet. She only knew that she couldn’t tell Xavier the truth.
He crossed his arms and looked at her down his long nose. The garden lights made his pale, wavy hair into a halo. “You’re lying.”
“If I’m lying, I’m murdering a member of my own family and locking the rest of my people in a cage. You understand that, right?”
That’s exactly what she’d be doing. Playing with everyone’s lives like dice.
“What I understand is that you’re very clever.” Before she had time to process that, to think of a reaction or a retort, he blurted out, “You and the Primary spend a lot of time alone.”
Liquid Lies Page 22