by Lynn Graeme
“You think I don’t?” Terris shot back. Her eyes flashed blue fire, her red lips curled over teeth. For an instant, she looked almost feline in her fury. “You think I didn’t shout and scream at the time? I did all of those things. I fought and I wept and I grieved. It took me years to come to peace with who I am and who I’ve become. You have no right to tell me I did it wrong, that I’m still doing it wrong. You know nothing about what I went through.”
“Then tell me!”
Terris looked away. Jamal could see her trembling, her curtain of hair hiding her emotions from view. For a moment, he thought she was about to grab her things and leave.
Panic overtook him then. The foreign, irrational feeling felt like an alien creature taking residence underneath his skin. He didn’t want her to go. And not because he wanted to be part of the damn trials, but because he couldn’t face the thought of never seeing Terris again. That realization was almost as terrifying as the prospect of her leaving.
What the hell was wrong with him?
Jamal struggled to handle his unmitigated confusion. If she left now, he wouldn’t be able to pursue her. Not in his condition. He could find her once he was out of the hospital, but only if the Council allowed him to log in to the system again. He was officially off-duty pending his recovery and wouldn’t have access to the Council’s database. Unless he could get one of his colleagues to look her up for him… .
Terris turned back to face him. Her eyes were bright but dry. No tears. Relief swamped Jamal. She stared at him fiercely, but her voice, when she spoke, was quiet and calm.
“It wasn’t the factions. The factions didn’t even exist at the time.”
She pushed the rest of her dress down, carefully rearranging the hem over her knees. A coping mechanism, Jamal was beginning to realize.
“I was five years old when it happened.”
*
This wasn’t the first time Terris was sharing her story. She’d had plenty of practice over the years, first with her schoolmates, then her friends in college, and later on her supervisors and co-workers. She hadn’t had suffer through intimate dissections by the media thanks to her parents who’d shielded her from interview requests for most of her formative years, but before she’d been outfitted with her BioSynth leg, she’d worn a bio-plast limb that inevitably drew other people’s attention to her. She was used to being the subject to their curiosity.
Still, for some reason she felt even more exposed now, vulnerable to the intensity of Jamal’s probing gaze. She could see the tightness in his jaw as he struggled to remain silent, waiting for her to speak.
Her leg still tingled from his touch. Just because it was a prosthesis didn’t mean she hadn’t felt every single second of that lover-like caress. The way he’d stroked her—his expression so utterly absorbed and focused—had stirred Terris to her very marrow. Moved her in a way that was both exhilarating and frightening if she let herself dwell on it.
Her breasts grew hotter and tighter the longer Jamal stared at her. She had to fight not to clench her thighs together, just like she had to fight not to draw his hand further up her dress to stroke even more intimate parts… .
Stop. Don’t even go there.
She was pitifully grateful for her meager self-control, to which she held on by the thinnest of threads. Heaven help her if her body betrayed her and allowed Jamal to scent her arousal.
Jamal’s frown deepened. Then Terris realized his stare was one of incomprehension.
“You were five years old?” he repeated.
Terris gave a short nod.
“So … not the factions.”
“That’s what I keep telling you.”
His frown was replaced by frustrated disbelief as she watched him do the math. The factions had only sprung into existence seven years ago, following the end of the last human-shifter war. They hadn’t been around when Terris had been a child, though the enmity between both species certainly had.
Disgruntled, Jamal was clearly at a loss as to how to deal with the absence of a target for his anger. The man relished having a temper, Terris mused. She’d once been angry too, but as she’d told Jamal, she’d had years to shout and grieve. Years to get over it and do something more productive with her life.
Jamal settled back against the pillows and folded his arms. There was a moment when his right wrist jammed into the crook of his left elbow, in the space where the missing hand would’ve otherwise automatically tucked itself. His expression darkened as he looked down at the bandages, but surprisingly, instead of dwelling on it, he looked up at Terris and impatiently nodded at her to continue.
It was an improvement. He was still all sharp edges, but he no longer seemed like he wanted to lunge at her with bared teeth. He oddly appeared even more upset at what had happened to her than at the reminder of his injured arm. And he was moving it, instead of letting it lie like dead weight next to his body. That boded well for his long-term recovery, didn’t it?
“Tell me everything,” Jamal said quietly. Not a cruel growl or an obnoxious demand, but an order all the same. The man simply couldn’t help himself.
“We were at a shopping mall. My dad took my brother to buy a new pair of sneakers, so Mom and I headed to the food court for ice-cream and pretzels.” Terris cast a wry sidelong look. “I had interesting taste buds as a kid.”
Jamal nodded curtly, a silent request for her to keep going.
“I don’t remember much about the explosion. When I was older, I’d discover the details and learn what it all meant. Fifty-seven casualties in total. Sixteen dead. Nationwide panic.” She shook her head. “At the time, though, I registered none of that. The blast had knocked me unconscious. I was in a coma for five days. When I woke up… .” She swept her hand down to indicate her leg.
Jamal frowned. Terris could see him rapidly sift through his memory vault as he put the dates and details together. She saw the second the mental jigsaw clicked into place.
A soft hiss escaped his lips. “The Wakefield attack.”
She nodded in reply.
Even twenty years after the fact, the explosion at Bloodhaven’s Wakefield Mall still lingered in society’s memory. The bomb had been set off by a group of shifters, in retaliation for a human mob attack on a mother and child two days prior. The attack had destroyed a popular shopping mall on a busy holiday weekend, injuring civilians and taking lives, and eventually precipitating the third human-shifter war. For most citizens, the event served as a warning of the state they could return to if they weren’t careful—if they allowed anything to breach the fragile peace between humans and shifters, they could return to that place of bloodshed and violence once more.
Jamal lowered his gaze to Terris’s leg.
“So you see, there’s no one left to hunt down,” she murmured.
He clenched his jaw. “There’s always someone to hunt down.”
“The perpetrators were caught. Most died in that police raid two months after the attack, the one they talk about in the news. Even if there were one or two who escaped, it’s been twenty years. What good does it do me to obsess about it?” Terris shook her head. “It was a long time ago. At some point I have to let it go and move on with my life. I’m not built for revenge.”
“Not like I am, you mean.”
“Is that what you’re planning? Revenge? I thought somebody told me your assailants”—a quick glance at his wrist—“were apprehended.”
“They were seen to, let’s put it that way. They got what was coming to them.” His gaze fell to her leg and turned black.
Terris focused her attention on the perfunctory details. “Part of a wall fell and crushed my lower leg. Infection set in a few days later, so they had to amputate above the knee.”
Jamal swore, the words coarse and ripe with feeling. “You were five years old.”
“I’m not saying it wasn’t hard, Jamal. Or that it didn’t hurt.”
Terris pushed away memories of the terror that had overwhelmed
her when she’d woken up in the ICU all those years ago, crying for her mommy and daddy. The fear, the confusion, the pain… .
She wanted to guide the conversation back to BioSynth, away from herself, but Jamal was too skilled at finding the cracks in her defenses. He was ruthless. Relentless.
“You didn’t just grieve all those years, did you, Terris? You struggled. For too long. That’s far too many operations and surgical procedures for such a young child to go through. How many infections settled in? How far back did they set your recovery? You didn’t have the benefit of shifter healing or Med-bands at the time to help you out. Fuck!” He hit the bed. “You didn’t deserve any of that. You were just a child.”
“I was,” Terris conceded slowly. “But there’s something to be said about children’s resiliency. They have the bizarre ability to forge ahead and focus on living. I don’t even remember much of what it was like before I lost my leg. Maybe that lack of memory helps. I might not be as strong if the same thing happened to me today. Adults have a dreadful tendency of being stuck in the past. Sometimes you have to stop looking back and just keep moving.”
“I think,” said Jamal, his expression oddly pensive, “you’re far stronger than you lead others to believe.”
Terris didn’t quite know how to respond to that.
“Jamal, I just want you to know that I … I understand. I was in your place once too. I know how difficult it can be in the beginning.”
“It’s not the same.” He scrubbed his face harshly, a gesture of innate frustration. “You were young and innocent. Hurt because you got caught in the crossfire through no fault of your own. This… .” He glanced down at his bandaged wrist. “This was all me. My doing.”
Terris stared at him, confused. “What are you talking about?”
“Doesn’t signify.”
“Evidently it does.”
“Leave it, Terris.”
The warning rumble sent a shiver through her, not wholly unwelcome. She shook her head, though, and forged on. “You’re going through a confusing, distressing, frustrating time right now, Jamal. I know that. But it’ll get better. You have options, more than I had twenty years ago. At least you don’t have to limp up the stairs with a clumsy dummy limb and a mouth full of braces.”
She cast him a winsome smile, the one that won over even the crankiest geriatric. Jamal’s mouth didn’t so much as tip.
He looked away. For a moment, anguish consumed his every feature. It stunned Terris, sucking the breath right out of her. The pain so evident at the very core of him made her ache in turn, and it was all she could do not to reach for him, to sweep his hair back from his forehead and urge him into her arms so that she could take away his pain.
He was right. She really had no self-preservation skills.
Jamal’s words, when they came, were heavy with weariness. “I led my team into an ambush, Terris. Three agents died, and one other’s just barely managed to scrape through with his life. I’m trapped here in this room, but even if I weren’t, I don’t know if I’d have the courage to visit him and look him in the eye. Losing a hand is nothing in the long run. Losing three lives … being the cause of such a vicious attack … that will stay with me forever.”
Terris covered her mouth.
Jamal was a proud, guarded man. He growled and glowered to hide his vulnerabilities. It was pure survival instinct to want to hide his weaknesses from his enemies. Yet he’d just laid himself bare for her, opening himself up to her judgment. That took great strength of character. He bowed his head … too ashamed to look her in the eye, Terris realized.
She reached for him then.
Jamal stiffened as Terris wrapped her arms around him. She held on, refusing to let go. She wasn’t even sure if her embrace was for him or more for herself.
Jamal kept his arms rigid by his sides. Then, hesitantly, he moved his head so that his mouth grazed her hair.
She stroked his arm, her fingers gliding down his hard muscles. Before she could reach halfway down his biceps he jerked back, and it was only then that Terris realized she’d been stroking his right arm.
Heart pounding, she stared at him. He kept his eyes fixed on the wall beyond. His chest rose and fell in rapid succession, his teeth gritted behind thinned lips.
Then he turned his head to look at her. His gaze was flat and emotionless. Terris’s heart sank.
“Tell me more about BioSynth,” he said, as if the embrace had never happened, as if her body and spirit hadn’t suddenly flared to life on coming in contact with his.
Terris swallowed, then fumbled for that cloak of professionalism she’d somehow discarded along with her common sense. This man did that to her—confused her and intrigued her and made her forget herself. And still she wanted to chip away at his walls and plead for him to let her in, despite all his unwelcoming snarls.
She sat up and tapped her calf, showing him there was no accompanying hollow sound. “The human-grade prototype,” she said briskly. “Still composed primarily of the standard bio-plast and polymer, but the upper layer’s a skin graft infused with my DNA. It’s not just attached to my body, it’s part of my body—no need to remove for swimming, running, or climbing. The only reason to remove it would be for possible upgrades, but our aim is for long-term wear. The shifter prosthesis will have very much the same structure, but attached with a different base so that it can be custom-made to shift into the user’s animal. Your DNA, as previously mentioned, will be what’s used to inform the prosthesis that a change is about to take place. Skin will pull, muscles will expand and contract, and so on. The fur will also be as close a match as possible. In terms of movement, we’ve perfected the gait-adaptive technology, allowing for full range of motion. I know that’s important for a Council agent.”
Jamal grunted in acknowledgment. He studied her leg with growing interest—more of a professional one than a personal one, she observed with unwarranted despondency.
“You’re sure about the full range of motion?” he asked.
She nodded. “I didn’t have to change the way I walk or run. It rotates and distributes weight according to how I move, instead of the other way around. And I have full sensation from above my knee down to the tips of my toes.”
“Sensitivity?”
“Temperature, texture, everything.”
Jamal looked down at her left leg. Then he reached over and stroked her from calf to thigh.
Terris choked on a startled breath.
Dark eyes gleamed back at her, wicked with want. “Just checking.”
Terris stared at Jamal, wide-eyed and stunned. Dear God, his lips were curving. And he was utterly devastating with that smile. Her pulse pounded like a tempestuous drumbeat in her ears, and somehow she managed to convince her body to release the breath she’d been holding.
“Lecher,” Terris whispered.
“On my best days,” Jamal agreed.
He was still stroking her leg. Terris fought against the urge to close her eyes and lean into him, letting him slowly drive her insane.
“I can do this,” he murmured.
“‘This’?” she repeated, unable to process anything beyond the feel of his hand, hot and callused and slow.
“BioSynth.” His mouth quirked up—that lovely, enticing mouth. “After all, if you can do it, so can I. It’s only fair.”
Terris struggled out of the lull he’d sent her into. “This isn’t a contest, Jamal.”
“No, but my reasons are sound. I’ve asked my questions, I know what I’m getting into. Nobody’s forcing me to do this—not anymore. This is all me. I’m in.”
He lifted his hand from her thigh and extended it to her, ready to shake hands. Irrationally, Terris missed his touch already.
“You’re aware there are risks involved,” she warned.
“All the better. I thrive on risks.”
“You forget, I have to determine whether you’re a suitable candidate before we can accept you.”
“Oh, you’
ll accept me, all right. I’m strong, stubborn, and determined. I’ll be the best candidate you’ll ever have.”
“Arrogant, too.”
“On my best days.”
Terris had a whole list of questions prepared that she was supposed to go through with Jamal as part of his evaluation. As she gazed at him now, however, she realized he was right. Whatever hitches they might encounter during the trial, she had no doubt he’d persevere and fight through them based on pure willpower alone. Jamal was a fighter. There was no way he’d lie down and take the hand dealt to him. He’d hack and slash and burrow his way through to the very end.
She wondered if he loved as hard as he fought.
Shaken, Terris seized Jamal’s hand and sealed the deal. “I look forward to working with you, Agent Mousenn.”
“Likewise, Ms. McLachlan. Likewise.”
Chapter Four
If Jamal expected to sit around bored in a sanitized room while scientists in lab coats took his measurements and outfitted him with a selection from various designs, he was quickly disabused of that notion over the next three weeks.
He was inundated with visits from at least five different doctors, scientists, social workers, and representatives guiding him through preliminary consultations. Terris sat in on some of those meetings, and his senses inevitably strayed from the presentation to hone in on her. He’d watch her from the corner of his eye, picking up on every kernel of movement, his nostrils flaring at her subtly sweet scent, his keen ears attuned to every soft breath she took.
His colleagues would laugh their fool heads off if they could see him now. Sure, Terris was attractive, but not the kind of attractive he was usually into. Jamal had little patience for the pretty and pristine. Hell, witness his hostility when they’d first met—and yeah, he’d been an unreasonable bastard then. Still was. He could admit it.
Thing was, he didn’t coddle. He didn’t pamper or woo or bring flowers. He knew nothing about sweet words and pillow talk. His hot temper and short patience got too much in the way of any of that bullshit. And not just in his personal life, but in his professional one as well.