As Cold As Ice

by Mandy Rosko

  Chapter Seventeen

  Soren brought Jessica back upstairs. On the way, he could hardly look at her, but that was all right because he’d grabbed a clipboard and one of the printed files hanging on the wall near the arena. He started to fill in some imaginary training he’d had Jessica do while they’d been down there.

  He never took off her shackles, and there was no ice that needed cleaning up this time, so he wrote down that he’d had her run twenty laps around the arena, before having her do more exercises in the arena itself. That should account for her flushed cheeks and wild hair. Even though she’d dragged it into a tight ponytail, Soren still couldn’t help but notice how some hair stuck out in certain places.

  He wanted to grab onto her, drag her into a dark corner, get that damned elastic band out of her hair and kiss her again. He wanted to take her pants off, those plain cotton panties, and put his tongue inside of her.

  The second he felt a twitch in his penis, he had to stop that train of thought. He couldn’t be thinking about things like that. He couldn’t be getting an erection while he walked through the halls that actually were populated by guards, handlers, and hidden cameras.

  After taking Jessica back to her room, Soren went to his office.

  A lot of the employees in the building were expected to work ridiculous hours—the guards, the doctors, and the caretakers and handlers. Because of this, there were small, plain rooms where beds were kept. Employees were able to use their breaks to sleep for a time, allowing them to keep going for the rest of their shift. There were also shower stalls, which were especially useful if a paranormal being tested happened to puke on someone, which occurred a lot more than anyone realized.

  Soren took advantage of the shower. It wasn’t exactly public, but the stalls were so damned small, allowing anyone who walked in to see his hairy legs from the knees down and his body from the shoulders up. Even there, he couldn’t think about her.

  His cock was hard and he wanted to touch it, to curl his fingers around his aching prick and pump his shaft until he came again. Soren could still smell Jessica in the air, and it was the longest amount of time he’d ever allowed himself to be in the shower. He didn’t like going in there where people could see him so exposed. He’d done everything in his power to prevent that from ever happening.

  Which was a funny thing, because ever since Jessica was caught and brought in, his priorities had changed. After that, he was more than willing to let the others, his coworkers, see him, see the proof of what he was on his body, and none of it would even matter.

  He’d known he had to find a way of getting her out of there long before she threatened to out him as a paranormal. It didn’t matter to him. He’d been angry with her for the threat, sure, but he would’ve done the exact same thing in her position. It was hard to damn a person when thoughts like that were going through his mind.

  He’d never thought she would allow him to touch her. After watching her with Charles, he’d been furious. He wasn’t even sure why. Of course she would talk sweetly to anyone who would listen to her, though; she wanted out of this place. Other paranormals had flirted their way into the good graces of doctors and handlers. One or two had even managed to escape that way, which was why, if it was ever discovered that someone was being more than a little handsy, that feelings were starting to get involved, the employee was either fired, or moved to a different part of the facility, maybe even a different building.

  Soren walked a thin line, but he was fairly sure Markus couldn’t fire him. The man needed him too damned much.

  If he ever found out what Soren was doing, however—not just preparing for Jessica’s escape, but the sex and the kissing—Soren would have a lot more to worry about than losing his job.

  At that point, he’d been lucky no one had found anything out with how sloppy he’d been.

  Soren turned off the water when his erection died away, grabbed a towel, and stepped out of the stall to dress.

  Despite how much it had infuriated him to see Jessica flirting with Charles, and Charles clearly eating it up, that was probably the only reason why no one suspected him of anything. They thought Jessica was infatuated with Charles. Or at the very least, making an attempt to free herself from this place by using him. Charles had been spoken to on more than one occasion by Markus about that.

  It was the handlers who were a problem. They were often the ones who were able to get away with their sexual perversions against the paranormals who were kept there because they came and went so often, being moved from building to building, constantly rotated to wherever they were needed the most. There was no time to form any emotional attachments.

  Soren had overheard more than one handler speaking of the paranormal woman who could control ice, and how they would like nothing more than to ‘bend that ass over’.

  A few times, Soren had just worked the computers to force a transfer. Another time, he had to have a talk with a couple of them, to make sure they understood Jessica was off-limits.

  The third time, when one particular genius who thought he was tough tried getting into Soren’s face, demanding to know what he would do about it if he went around Soren anyway, Soren had to teach him a lesson he wouldn’t soon forget.

  Some paranormals had a hard time hiding their powers. Soren didn’t. Not when one of his powers was intense physical strength. That pretty much meant he could always win at a fist fight without giving off the impression that he himself was a paranormal.

  Provided he took a few hits himself and didn’t completely show the other man up.

  When he was done with the guy, the man had a broken nose, a fractured wrist, and an invitation to go and work elsewhere.

  Soren had purposely let his lip get busted so the handlers, collectors, and guards who had watched the entire thing could still see him bleed. But they also knew he would kick the ass of everyone who dared try to stay inside of Jessica’s cell for too long whenever they had to do their jobs.

  The handlers were different from the caretakers. The caretakers just cleaned up and served meals. They were basically on the janitorial staff. The handlers, however, were much different from the guards who wore white, and were not so secretly made fun of by the paranormal community for looking like stormtroopers.

  Handlers were like the hunters and collectors. They served a specific purpose for Head Office, and Soren had worked very hard to keep them away from Jessica for as long as possible.

  Whenever a subject was brought in, being particularly rowdy but not violent enough to require a guard, a handler came in. The handlers where there to feed, bathe, and clothe the paranormal in question.

  Feedings that usually required a tube shoved up a nostril, and being tied down and sprayed with a cold hose for a bath.

  Thankfully, Jessica had never done anything that required some asshole handler to write down a recommendation for treatment like that. He’d been checking frequently to make sure of it.

  The time for protecting her was almost done, however. He needed to get back upstairs and report to Markus.

  The secretary in front of his door wouldn’t let him pass. Which was strange, and worrisome. The smile on her mouth was normal, however, as she declared that Mr. Layton was having a phone call with the mayor, and he wouldn’t be available for Soren. She already had what Soren needed, and he relaxed as he took the folder and went back to the elevator.

  Only on the way down to his floor, with the papers ready in his hands, did he feel his stomach turn.

  The folder was thin, but heavy. It took him only a minute to read what was inside. Two days. Soren had less than that amount of time to prepare.

  The elevator doors parted for him, and without looking up, he took one step forward just as Charles walked right into him.

  Soren looked up at the man after the harsh clicks of the shackle on his wrist registered in his ear.

  The metal shackle was heavy, cold, and strong. He stared hard at Charles, too shocked and horrified to say anythi
ng. Inside his mind, he was screaming and flipping out on the man, but he couldn’t make his body do any of the things he was telling it to, not when he was sure this was being recorded.

  That and the five guards dressed in white standing behind Charles meant it was probably a bad idea for him to let his emotions get the better of him.

  Charles’ mouth thinned and he tilted his head, as if what he’d done had somehow hurt him. “You’re done, Soren.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Jessica woke up the next day to the pleasurable sensation of Soren’s hands sliding up and down her arm, her hip, and her thighs. She sighed and turned onto her back, smiling. “Hey, what are you—”

  She opened her eyes. When her brain realized it wasn’t Soren who had his hands on her, but a handler, some random guy who’d just walked into her room, every fight-or-flight instinct inside of her flared up and rushed her like a mob of a thousand screaming people rolled into one body.

  Jessica screamed at the man. It wasn’t a helpless, horrified shriek either, but something to make him feel helpless and horrified, to scare him the fuck away from her because he thought she was possessed.

  By the way he jumped back and launched his hands off her, as if she’d burst into flames like Cindy, she’d accomplished her goal.

  Jessica launched herself out of bed, wide awake and mission-oriented. Her goal was to kill the man in front of her, or at the very least, make him wish he was dead.

  The guy held his hand out in front of her, a nervous smile twitching at his lips. He was young, probably early twenties or so, if the light haze of red acne on his cheeks was anything to go by. “Easy there, sweetheart. One press of this button and I’ll have thirty more men in here to hold you down.”

  Whether to sedate her or to fuck her, she had no idea. Where the hell was Soren?

  Jessica was forced to relax her body. She had to. The handler’s hand was pressed to something on his hip. That was pretty much where they kept all of their emergency pagers.

  The guy was right—one press of that button, and a signal would be sent out to every guard and handler in the building. They would rush to her room, and there wouldn’t a whole lot of anything she could do about it. Not with the shackle on her wrist.

  The man’s smile gained confidence, like every school bully to ever exist, based solely on the power he held whenever his prey was helpless.

  Jessica took a good look at herself in the shatterproof mirror off to the side of her bed. She looked like a wild wreck. Even without her power to turn this little prick into an ice cube, she still appeared dangerous and scary.

  “That’s it, little girl, Nice and easy.”

  Jessica’s spine straightened, and she moved over to her dresser built into the wall. She opened it and pulled out her Head Office-approved recruit uniform.

  “If you’re here to bring me to the gym with the others, there’s better ways of waking me up,” she told him.

  She kept the corner of her eye fixed on the mirror, making sure happy hands didn’t move. He didn’t. She couldn’t quite see his face from the reflection in the mirror, but the sound of his voice made her think he was smiling.

  “That’s what I was trying to do.”

  Asshole.

  “Yeah, well, you and the other handlers will just have to keep jerking each other off in the locker rooms, because you’re not touching this,” she said.

  Why is this guy here instead of Soren? Is he sick?

  Jessica couldn't ignore the unsettling cold that had iced her at the thought. What if something happened to him?

  The handler sputtered behind her. “I can touch you whenever I…want…”

  The handler trailed off, like someone was turning the dial down to slow on his brain.

  It was probably one of Jessica’s worst ideas to undress in front of the man, as it put her in a vulnerable position. But she was trained to defend herself, and she wanted to throw the asshole off.

  If he thought he was taking power from her by putting his hands on her, then she needed to get that idea out of his tiny little head. She was still smarter, stronger, and faster than he ever would be. This little shithead could bring all the guys he wanted in there and he could have sex with her in front of the lot of them, and he still wouldn’t break her.

  Jessica grabbed a clean pair of cotton panties from her drawer after she kicked away her pajama shorts, bending over to put them on. She couldn’t stop herself from smiling when she heard the tiny hitch of breath that came from the boy behind her.

  Boy, because there was no way in hell her mind was going to continue to think of this kid as a man. The youngest anyone could be to apply for a job as a handler was eighteen.

  “You ever touch a woman before, there, junior?” Jessica asked, putting on a fun and flirting tone. She half-turned to look at him, giving the kid a view of her breasts.

  Naturally, his eyes shot straight down and stayed there. Not uncommon—Jessica did flatter herself to have a fine rack—but this guy was clearly young enough that he didn’t know how to even pretend to have any kind of restraint.

  It took him a couple of seconds to realize what she’d even said to him, and he actually shook his head, like a cartoon character shaking away a daze. “What? Yes!” he snapped.

  It was the fact that he sounded so defensive that made her doubt it, though she would’ve already known the answer to that even if he’d said nothing at all.

  “Sure you have,” she said. Then, just to be an even bigger tease, she decided she was going to go without her bra for the rest of the day. She grabbed her black t-shirt with the Head Office logo on it, faced the kid completely, and then swiftly put the t-shirt over her head, letting it slide down her body.

  This kid definitely had no restraint. She watched the way his Adam’s apple bobbed hard against his throat. She couldn’t help but smile.

  “You know, all you had to do was say you were a virgin, and I might’ve let you keep touching. At least it’ll be good learning for when you get your first girlfriend,” Jessica said. Despite the situation, she felt strangely empowered, like she’d woken up on the right side of the bed, regardless of how this idiot had woken her up.

  The kid smiled and shook his head, as though Jessica was the young idiot in the room. “Lady, you’re really pushing it.”

  “Uh-huh.” Jessica pulled on her pants then sat down on her bed and pulled on her socks and black Head Office-issued shoes. “So, let me guess, you’re here to take me to the other recruits.”

  “No, I’m here to take you to see the doctors.”

  Jessica froze. There was only one reason why this kid would be doing that: the implant. The one that had to be put inside of her before she left this place with the other paranormals.

  Maybe Soren was there waiting for her and that was why this guy had been sent.

  If Soren had been jealous when she’d been sitting close to Charles, she wondered how he would react when she told him some acne-faced kid had been trying to feel her up.

  She got to her feet, smiling and so eager to get moving that the handler actually stepped back, like he was expecting an attack.

  “All right, what are you waiting for? Let’s go.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Soren was not with the other doctors when Jessica went for her exam, and to have a huge tracker injected into her arm with the biggest, thickest needle in the history of time, like out of The Hunger Games or something. Only thicker. It was shocking that she didn’t need two stitches after the thing had been injected inside her.

  She lived in a world where drills were small enough to make perfect holes in the stem of a single hair, and Markus was so damned cheap with the equipment he used on his prisoners that she got stuck with a horse pill being injected into her arm.

  At least it wasn’t in her ass cheek. She told herself that again and again, trying to make herself feel better with that one bit of good news, but it still didn’t make up for the fact that she had no idea where Soren was.<
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  Getting her blood taken and having a pill-sized thing injected into her arm was bad enough—Jessica absolutely hated needles—but the fact that Soren wasn't around was really making the tiny hairs on the back of her neck stand on end.

  Where the hell was he? Once Jessica thought about it, she realized she'd never bothered to ask what his actual title was whenever he was working. He wore a white lab coat like a lot of other employees, but that didn't necessarily make him a doctor. Maybe he was just a lab guy, someone who looked at beakers and into test tubes while trying to find ways of making paranormal DNA useful to the rest of the human population.

  Despite those thoughts going through her head, Jessica swallowed hard and sat straight, letting everything be done to her that the men and women around her wanted to be done.

  Soren was in trouble; she'd have to be an idiot not to see that. He was a paranormal working secretly in Head Office. The fact that he wasn't there was telling.

  The next time a woman in white came up to her and handed her the pajamas all the other paranormals wore, that she would be wearing during the fake escape, Jessica smiled and tried to be casual.

  "I heard Soren's sick today. There a bug going around?"

  The woman just smiled at her. "Yeah, something like that. I hope I don't catch it," she said with a soft, sincere laugh.

  It was the sort of tone Jessica might've believed, had she not been making shit up.

  When the woman walked away, leaving Jessica to get dressed alone and in peace—not counting the cameras that were watching her at that moment—she had to keep her head down.

  She pretended she was just paying very close attention to her legs as she put one after the other into each pajama leg, but she just didn't want the cameras to see her expression. She knew she wouldn't be able to hide it.

  They knew. Somehow, the people working in this building had found out what Soren was, and he was gone. Was he still in the building? Was he wearing shackles and being experimented on somehow?