by Mandy Rosko
He glanced at her. To his credit, he wasn’t cold. He looked sorry, but that didn’t stop the lurch Jessica felt in her heart when he shook his head. “No.”
Chapter Ten
Jessica wanted to jump up and yell at him. She barely managed to contain herself enough to sit up calmly. The warm wetness between her legs was starting to become uncomfortable since the mood had been killed. “All right. Can I ask why?”
Soren’s face twisted as he turned away, as if he’d seen or done something so horribly unforgivable that he couldn’t look her in the eyes. “I shouldn’t have done that anyway. I’m sorry for leading you on. That wasn’t my intent.”
“No, your intent was to have sex. As was mine, so I don’t know what’s going on with this sudden change now.”
She really needed it, ached for it even more than she had when she’d first come down here.
“Charles just reminded me, that’s all.”
“Reminded you of what?”
Soren finally looked at her, his blue eyes hard and frostier than anything Jessica could’ve conjured herself. “He reminded me that you’re a prisoner.”
Jessica would’ve fallen back a step if she’d been standing. As it was, she felt like Soren had shoved her.
She swung her legs over the edge of the stainless steel table and glared at him, long and hard. “I won’t be a prisoner for long.”
Soren didn’t back down. “That doesn’t change the fact that you are a prisoner. You’re only in this building because hunters caught you and put you in shackles. It’s not right for me to touch you like that. It’s borderline rape.”
That word really pissed her off. Jessica’s fists clenched, and she struggled with everything inside of her to not punch him in the eye.
“You’re angry,” Soren said.
“Of course I’m fucking angry!” Jessica snapped. She couldn’t contain it, and she wasn’t trying to, either. “You’re seriously going to stand there and look at me like I’m some kind of victim? I guess you forgot that I was the one who kissed you first, who threatened to out you if you didn’t help me. I’m not a victim, and you’re not taking advantage of anything. I doubt you would even know how to!”
Her words didn’t seem to be making Soren see the light so much as they were just making him uncomfortable, and she didn’t want that, either. She didn’t know what to do about any of this, and she hated it.
“It was my choice all along. I wanted to kiss you, I wanted you to touch me, and I wanted the sex. You weren’t forcing anything on me.”
Soren shook his head but didn’t take his eyes away from her that time. “I can’t, Jessica. It’s still wrong.”
She threw her hands into the air then slammed them down again. “I’m not going to guilt you into it! What do you think I am?”
It felt just as bad that he would not only not have sex with her, but think the entire point to her raging was that she just wanted to force him into it.
“I wasn’t thinking that,” Soren said. There was no trace of the man who had been sorry for what he’d done a minute before. His face turned into a blank mask, his voice just as devoid of any emotion. His eyes changed a little, however. They flashed gold before turning back to their normal blue.
Jessica sucked in a breath, wondering if the creature he was hiding on the inside was struggling to get out.
Unlike her, he wasn’t wearing any shackles. She should probably stop trying to provoke him.
“I’m sorry for the misunderstanding, Jessica, and I also apologize for taking this as far as it went. It wasn’t my intention to make things any harder for you than they already were.”
“Great.” She wished she had something else to say other than that, but nothing came. Her adrenaline was pumping and despite the anger inside of her, her clit still throbbed, was still swollen, and still needed more of his touch. She was frustrated. Her blood was still humming, and she had half a mind to do something about it herself.
Jessica wasn’t an exhibitionist, and she wasn’t about to start then. The worst part about this entire thing was that she knew there was no way she would get the chance to do something about this new ache, even when she was alone. Too many cameras watching her, too many men she couldn’t see.
She was just going to have to deal with the frustration of not being touched.
Soren approached her. Still cold, still giving off that uncaring vibe that rubbed her in exactly the wrong way, even though she was ninety-nine percent sure he was faking it.
He had a key in his hand. It looked like a skeleton key, only on the square tip there was a green chip with golden connectors. It was enough to make sure no one could just pick the locks. They also had to have the chip connected so it would send the right signals to unlock the shackles.
“I’m going to unlock you now,” he said.
Jessica held out her wrists, as if there was an actual chain binding them together. “I figured.”
She knew she was being bitchy, but she couldn’t help herself. Since she knew there wasn’t going to be any sex in her immediate—or even the foreseeable—future, it left her feeling more than a little irritable.
She was eager to get out of the shackles so she could start blasting those training dummies and the brick walls set up in the arena.
Soren touched her wrist, his palm making contact with the metal, spelled shackle, and her skin.
The touch made her inhale deeply through her nose, and her spine tensed up.
Soren didn’t seem to have the same reaction, though he noticed it. His eyes turned up to hers before he inserted the key into the lock. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
“I know,” Jessica said.
One shackle popped off, and then the second. She was free. Her power thrummed through her body, enveloping her like an old friend hugging her tight after a long separation. She sighed and wanted to sink into that feeling of being in control again.
It crossed her mind that she could try and make a break for it. She could try to overpower Soren, or even ask for his cooperation and the two of them could just fake a fight, but she knew better.
Soren also decided to remind her of it anyway. “I would help you get out now, but there’s no way you would make it out of the building. We’re too deep underground, and there are too many guards with guns. Not all of them are tranq guns, either.”
“I could take you for a hostage.”
Soren smiled at her. “I know you’re really angry with me, but I don’t think you would want to do that unless you’d want to see me shot. Markus considers me to be important, but not that important. Besides, he’d know I was helping you. You wouldn’t fool anyone with a hostage scheme, and neither would I.”
Jessica hated that. She hated this entire thing. But instead of dwelling on it, she just followed Soren to the center of the arena, and when he pointed to a brick wall, five feet across and six feet wide, she paid attention.
There was more than one kind of wall like that, as well. Some had holes in them. Others were connected to other walls. None of them were very tall, and Jessica already figured they were to give the two fighting paranormals a chance to hide, or to sneak up on each other. When the floor was lowered so the people seated could look over the walls with ease, it probably made for a much better show.
“Freeze up anything you can. Go nuts. They only want me to test how powerful your ice actually is.”
The people upstairs, Markus included, had already seen her kill a few men with her ice. They likely had all the information they needed, and this was just another series of tests to make sure she could keep up with that power. That she couldn’t run out.
“If you tell them I turned this place into a skating rink, they let me join their Proxy Project?”
Soren nodded. “There’s already someone lined up to be your shadow when you get it. It’ll be the only chance you have to get outside of these walls and make a real run for it.”
That was all Jessica needed to hear. She summoned all
the cold in her body and sucked out all the moisture in the air surrounding her, focused it into a glowing blue ball of freezing light in her hands, and shot it at the nearest brick wall.
The floor beneath her trembled from the impact. Soren lifted his brows as he watched the ice encase the brick like a thick coating. The ice steamed, wispy tendrils that snaked up and away from Jessica’s work, and it frosted as the warmer air of the arena touched it.
“Wow.”
A crack punctured the following silence, and without touching or doing anything else to it, that crack broke down the far side of the ice and brick, snapping along in heavy lines until it reached the far edge. The cracked ice crumbled, and instead of just the ice breaking away, the entire top half of the brick wall caved. It fell forward, as if someone had pushed the back of it, and then shattered on the floor.
Chapter Eleven
The rest of the hour passed easily enough, and Jessica was almost able to forget how uncomfortable she was, about how the slickness between her legs and the need for touch was bothering her. After destroying several more brick walls, putting a training dummy in a cube of ice that was a foot and a half thick, and coating the entire floor in ice as well, she felt much better.
Soren certainly seemed impressed enough as he knelt and slid his finger over the icy floor.
“It’s perfect. It actually is like a skating rink, only smoother because no one skated over it,” he said then looked up at Jessica.
There was something in his eyes. It was more than just being impressed with her. She couldn’t describe the look on his face, but she preened at the compliment.
When she asked Soren what they were going to do about the mess, he told her to leave it. Neither of them would make any attempts to clean it up, and he didn’t want her using her powers to get rid of the ice anyway. Not that she could completely.
“This way, they’ll have to at least chip away the ice before this arena can be used again.”
Jessica grinned. She liked the idea of that. “Won’t Markus be angry?”
Soren shrugged as they made their way to the doors. “Yeah, but he’s rich enough that he can handle it. He’s not going to be the one down here cleaning it all up personally, but if it puts off more arena fights for the next couple of days, then I’d say it was worth it. Rich men hate having to reschedule their fun.”
The smile faded from Jessica’s mouth. “I didn’t know he had paranormals fight down here so often.”
“Often enough. Not always to the death, but it’s still never good.”
They made it to the double doors, and Soren pulled the shackles out of his wide and deep white pockets. “Hold out your wrists.”
“I was hoping you’d forget.”
Soren smiled, but there was nothing happy about it.
Jessica looked over at the arena. “Give me a second before you do that,” she said, stepping away from him.
“Just be quick, we need to get back upstairs.”
Jessica nodded, looking back to the mess she’d made. The ice crystals that spiked up from some of the brick she’d blasted, branching off into other places like tree branches. The spots that were untouched were obvious, but it was the fact that her ice had been so cold it had shattered the brick that made her happy.
And then she looked over at those nice, comfy-looking seats Markus and the rest of his asshole friends sat in while they watched, or ignored, the paranormals who were fighting for their entertainment.
Stuff like that was supposed to be illegal. Even paranormals had that many rights, but Markus didn’t care.
She launched a rocket of cold at the deep leather seats. Then another. And another. Jessica shot her hands forward until the ice surrounding those chairs was so thick she couldn’t even see the leather seats beneath it.
Her chest heaved again with the force of her attack. She shivered as the sweat that had started to glisten on her body began to chill enough that even she was cold.
She turned back to Soren. His arms were crossed, but she didn’t look angry. More curious. “I guess I can make up some reason that caused you to accidentally put all of Mr. Layton’s seats inside an ice cube.”
Jessica went back to Soren and held her wrists out. He put the shackles back on her with no pleasure on his face.
Jessica tried to ignore the little shiver it brought her when he touched her skin. “Just tell him I thought I saw him sitting there.”
Soren gave her a look, and those blue eyes magnified the warm, shivery feeling inside her. “Yeah, right.”
*****
The next two days were spent undergoing more tests, most of which were administered by Soren, and a couple by Charles. Though she was still incredibly angry and frustrated by Soren and his new policy of not taking advantage of her, she would prefer him over Charles any day.
The way he put his hand on her shoulder and stared into her eyes, the way he called her sweetheart, irritated her beyond belief.
Jessica’s last name wasn’t Frost for a reason. Despite the incredible irony that came with having a name like that, most other women—and even some men-—thought she was incredibly cold when it came to the way the opposite sex treated her.
She could be walking down the sidewalk in the city and be catcalled a hundred times over and it wouldn’t bother her. Having an older man call her ‘sweetheart’, ‘honey’, or ‘darling’ was never a problem, either. The age thing also had nothing to do with it. For one thing, it was only pseudo-insulting, and for another, it only became insulting and demeaning if she let it.
Words had power only when people gave them power. Jessica was a big believer in that, and she would be damned before she had anyone accuse her of being overly sensitive. But she just fucking hated it when Charles touched her hair and got a little too close.
She kept her anger to herself, however. For one thing, it was her own fault he got it into his head that he was allowed to do that. She was the one who hadn’t backed up when he’d tried to kiss her.
Jessica made sure to pull back every time he tried after that, however.
She wasn’t about to tell him his advances weren’t wanted, either. Not when she could use them to her advantage. Also, pointing out to him that he made her uncomfortable only seemed like it would expose a weakness in her, show Markus she wasn’t strong enough to go out in the world and find fugitive paranormals, or her brother.
So Jessica continued to smile at him, bat her lashes and look helpless and small whenever he was around, because that was what clearly got him off, what made him want to help her even more.
Still, one day, she was going to punch him for this, even if she never told him what it was for.
The time awake, working with Soren, letting him take her blood and even running around downstairs in the gym with the guards who worked in the building, was the best. At least then, she wasn’t alone in her cell.
It had been upgraded since Markus had decided she would be on his team. There was a better bed, a better shower, and a television for her to watch all the propaganda bullshit she wanted.
Not that she had any time to do that, of course. She was exhausted by the time Soren or Charles walked her back to her room.
The only thing really horrible about being alone, aside from the fact that her door was locked and she wouldn’t be allowed out for anything, was that it let her mind wander back to Soren, back to the way he had touched her.
Her blood heated, making her sex warm between her legs as her nipples puckered. He hadn’t even really touched her skin to skin, but it had still been his touch that brought her off so damned well.
The main problem lately was that she ached so badly for more. She wanted to touch herself, to climb under the sheets of her new—but still not great—bed and take care of business. Or even do it in the shower, one palm leaning against the tiled wall while her fingers worked inside of her.
The thing that stopped her was the fact that she was never really alone. Despite the better residence with the pea
ch walls and the floral prints, like in a Best Western or something, she knew the mirror in her bathroom was still two-way. She knew there was a tiny camera watching her in the corner. It was bad enough that the people who were guarding her still got to see shots of her ass and tits—she tried to avoid that, but there was no way in Hell she’d been so lucky that they hadn’t seen anything as she’d climbed in and out of her shower—but she wasn’t about to give the faceless, nameless people watching a show.
She’d come close, though. In her last shower, as she’d stared down at her feet, hot steam rising around her body, Jessica found herself fantasizing about Soren. She imagined his palm between her legs, slowly rubbing against her denim-clad clit, back and forth, harder and harder.
It hadn’t made the throbbing ache any better, and without meaning to, one of her hands came up to cup and caress her breast. She’d tweaked her nipple before she’d realized what she was doing and put a stop to it.
The glass in her shower doors was frosted—by design, not because of her—so whoever was watching her hadn’t gotten the best shot of that, but there was no way they hadn’t recognized where her hand had gone just then.
Fuck. Why couldn’t Soren have just taken her?
The next day, during training, it was all she could think about, so much so that when Soren’s loud voice broke through the haze of her mind, she nearly jumped.
“You’ll pretty much be going through your hunter training again. This should be a piece of cake for you. I expect you to give these other young men and women here a run for their money,” Soren would say as she and a group of twenty or so other new recruits lined up to find out who was the fastest, who could climb the rope ladders without tangling each other up, and who could capture a paranormal the easiest.
When Jessica had gone through her own test to obtain her hunter license, a paranormal had been released into the room. Usually, they were volunteers, people with low-level powers, or maybe an alpha werewolf to throw everyone off-guard. They tended to be paranormals who turned themselves in and worked for The Head Office for Paranormal Containment and Study, hoping to lead somewhat normal lives, like the people in the poorly written sitcom that played over and over in the building.