Reckless Road

by Feehan, Christine

  No matter what her grandmother said, she felt her gift had to be faulty. The other women in her family had the gift. They found the men who felt the exact same way about them. She went barefoot in her home, connecting with the earth. Feeling vibrations. So certain. Every single time, it was always Player, and yet he never felt those same strong connections back. The physical, yes. Their chemistry was extremely strong, and he felt that, just as she did. He needed her, certainly. But a devastating connection that was forever, that would bind them together heart to heart, soul to soul—Player had no knowledge of such a thing, or at least he rejected that bond with her.

  Zyah knew she should let him leave. Go to his brothers in Torpedo Ink. Let them take him to his clubhouse. Find a way to try to separate herself from him. She was already tangled with him so tightly she knew it would hurt for years to come when they separated. Something undefined, some powerful portent inside, told her if she let him go, he would die. She couldn’t do that. She was always intelligent enough to listen to her instincts, and everything in her shouted to keep him close. She hoped it wasn’t just her wanting to belong to him. Could she really be that lonely? She doubted it. She was independent. She knew she always would be, even if she found the perfect man.

  “Zyah?”

  “It’s all right, Player. You don’t have to talk to me. I’m here, so just try to get some sleep. Steele said the more you sleep, the faster you’ll heal.” She was tired of trying to connect with him on the same level. It wasn’t going to happen. She had to face that.

  She pulled her legs up and wrapped her arms around her knees, hugging herself tightly, staring at the artwork her grandfather had painstakingly drawn all those years ago for her grandmother. It was very different. Very unique. Black and white. Charcoal. Such beautiful, precise lines. Even his signature falcon had been drawn with those lines. She couldn’t believe how much time and care he must have taken to draw such a masterpiece for Anat. The piece was an abstract, lines, whorls, squiggles and what looked like bird wings. Thick shading and thinner ones. She sometimes traced them lovingly over the glass. She almost knew them by heart.

  Her father’s frame was equally as beautiful, a carved masterpiece, undeniably precious to her and every line memorized as well, that incredible scrollwork that looked as if it had been dug up from some ancient pyramid and was covered in the very stars above them. She often traced the various carvings, and now that she had seen the doors to Alena’s restaurant and knew that Player had been the one to carve them, she thought he was the only one who might equal her father in his ability to capture such beauty in wood for her.

  “I don’t like going to sleep when you’re upset.”

  “What’s different about tonight than any other night? Let’s just get you healed and out of here. Isn’t that what we both want?” She was careful to keep the hurt out of her voice.

  He didn’t answer. She kept her head down, aware that, although it was very dark out, the light shining off the sea gave them both the ability to read expressions if they chose. She didn’t want to chance him seeing her face. He made her feel vulnerable. Exposed. Every time she was with him— near him—she felt that way. She detested it when he felt so far from her. When she knew he wasn’t feeling the same way and never would.

  She stayed very quiet, going over in her mind the things she saw repeatedly in his nightmare, trying to ignore the childhood trauma. She concentrated on the beginning. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Something wasn’t quite right there. It was as if the other children loved the story and the memories the hallucinogenic mushrooms brought them, but Player had a terrible aversion to the novel. He detested the recollection, which was odd because it happened repeatedly and he laughed with the others. He was so good at faking his amusement that those who knew him well believed him.

  Zyah turned that over and over in her mind. She replayed the images of the various times she saw him do it in his dreams. The age changed, but the circumstances were often the same. There was some kind of intense trauma, a horrific torture of one or more of the others, and the reading would be asked for. At first, she could never get beyond the terrible things that had been done to the members of Torpedo Ink as children or teens, but eventually she forced herself to only look at Player’s face. He despised when they asked for the reading of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

  He never stopped Absinthe or Transporter or Absinthe’s brother, Demyan, from reading the hated book, but he didn’t look at the others while it was being read. Why didn’t they notice? Because all of them had been beaten, tortured and used. They were all in such a terrible state and barely surviving. They were just children. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was entertainment, and Player knew it. They had to get their minds off what was happening to them, to their bodies. His illusions of Alice, the White Rabbit, the Cheshire Cat, the Mad Hatter and the caterpillar were his way of contributing to his brothers and sisters, but the cost to him was much greater than any of them understood. Maybe even greater than he understood.

  She rubbed her hand up and down her thigh, massaging her aching muscle. She really needed a long hot soak in a tub. That was one of the things she loved to do at night. Or sit in the hot tub on the lower deck out under the stars in the middle of the night. She didn’t dare, not with Player waking every night in a cold sweat, out of his mind, the illusion turning to some strange reality she couldn’t quite fathom but needed to figure out fast because last night, for the first time, she had actually heard the ticking of a clock. That hadn’t been there before, not in all the four weeks of terrible nightmares and illusions.

  Zyah glanced over at the bed. Player had drifted off. His body often went out fast, needing to rest and heal whether he wanted to or not. She glanced at her watch. He sometimes got a couple of hours of sleep before the nightmare took him. She hoped he would get at least that much. She knew from experience he was a very light sleeper, so she didn’t make the mistake of standing up and pacing like she wanted to. Instead, she eased her legs out and stretched to give her muscles a much- needed break.

  Once more, she concentrated on young Player’s face while Absinthe read Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland aloud to everyone. He stared down at his hands, even when the others clamored for the characters to run around the basement with them. They wanted entertainment. He wasn’t proud in providing it for them. Why? It made him sick to do so. He squirmed, even though he kept a little half smile on his face. Guilt crossed his handsome features. Even then he’d already been so good-looking. What did he have to feel guilty about? He was every bit as tortured as the others. Beaten. Raped. The flesh torn from his body. Thin from lack of food.

  The characters from the book suddenly joined them, acting out the scenes, making the others laugh, but Player’s expression never changed from that dark, miserable little boy staring down at his hands with that enigmatic little half smile. He didn’t think he was powerful, and yet he kept the characters acting out the scenes so easily, without looking or waving his hands toward them as a child might. Cards ran across the room to the delight of the others. Flamingos were held upside down to play croquet with.

  Player’s fingers began to move against his thigh in a familiar pattern. She had seen that pattern many, many times now. In his dreams and out of them. In his head he began to build things. Even while he created the illusion for his childhood sisters and brothers, he began to build the things that took him away from what was tearing him up inside.

  Zyah sat up straight. Player detested the illusion of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland so much that he took himself away from it by doing something else. He occupied himself by doing things his brain was very familiar with. He built bombs. He had been forced at a young age to learn, and he was good at it. Very good. He had a mind for it, and his hands were steady. His eyes were excellent. His memory impeccable. He was fast. The pocket watch. The gold pocket watch. The one that went from the White Rabbit’s very innocent golden pocket watch to the other one that suddenly appeare
d in the nightmare with the shadowy figure standing over the boy at the bench.

  She forced herself to breathe evenly, afraid the change in her breathing would wake Player. She knew she was getting close to some revelation. She just didn’t know what it was. Who could be so twisted that they would do these things to children? She pressed her fingers to her lips and shook her head, wiping her mind blank. She couldn’t think about that and help him. He needed help. He had to get through this. She had to get to a place where she understood what was actually happening to him to throw him from his nightmare into his illusion and then into an alternate reality that became his reality.

  So keep looking at that little boy down in that basement, Zyah. What do you see him doing while the others are watching the show he’s giving them? What did she see? He was tapping the rhythm on his thigh. Building the bomb in his head. Perfecting it. She saw the moment his head came up and alarm spread through him. What was it? What was different? What did he see that no one else did? They were still smiling. The Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland characters were still cavorting around the room.

  Zyah peered into the image until her eyes felt like they were bleeding. She looked everywhere and then looked again. Into the dark corners. The ceiling. She looked for the rabbit. The watch. Anything that was not part of the original story line that would have told a little boy that his illusion had gone from amusement into madness. Into the blurring of a line into possible reality.

  She was connected to his mind. She had to stop trying to stay apart from him if she was going to find out the truth and let herself connect wholly with him, but if she did, it would just be that much harder to tear herself away from him.

  She deserved better. She wasn’t going to settle for a man who didn’t love her. She didn’t want to be needed because she had a gift that could shore him up when his gift harmed him. She didn’t want to be wanted for sex. Okay, maybe that wasn’t being quite as truthful. She pressed her hand to her forehead, trying to decide whether to continue to be a coward and just call herself that.

  Player made a sound. The moment he did, she forgot about her dilemma and jumped up. From experience, she knew better than to touch him. He was already sweating, fighting the sheets.

  Without warning, the silly rabbit appeared. She was used to him now, life-sized, just standing there, staring at his watch, pink nose wiggling. In front of him was the table. Before he had been shadowy, barely across from the bed, standing just in front of her grandfather’s picture. That seemed such a sacrilege to her. Her grandfather and father had kept her safe for years, and now, when she needed their magic the most, it was failing her. Her gift was failing. Everything she counted on was failing.

  A man sat on the bench with his back to her, as he did in all of Player’s nightmares, still shadowy, still undefined, but she could make out wide shoulders. His head was down, and he concentrated on the various pieces of equipment in front of him. She had seen Player putting bombs together in his head enough times to know the likelihood was that whatever those individual tools, instruments and equipment were, put together, made up a bomb. The White Rabbit morphed into another man, one with a gold watch standing behind the man at work at the table.

  The man working on the bomb was Player. Young or old, she would know him. His brown hair was wild and artfully kissed with white streaks. His back had the Torpedo Ink colors tatted into his skin, covering a multitude of scars and burns. The shadowy figure stared down at his pocket watch while he hunched over Player’s shoulder.

  Suddenly, Zyah heard the ticking of the clock loud in the room, just as she had heard the night before. Her heart jumped and then began to pound. “Player. Wake up. Wake up now.”

  The man with the pocket watch lifted his head as if he’d heard her. That was very frightening. Immediately, she began to dance, pushing her feet into the floor, calling up the magic of the earth. She gently extended her arms to bind Player to her, weaving them together, her voice singing softly to him to call him back to her. Fortunately, she had managed to forestall the nightmare before he was too far into it. By staying in the bedroom with him, she hadn’t allowed whatever was gripping him so tight at night to take him down that path and fling him fully into another reality. If she didn’t gather her courage and connect fully with him to see what he had discovered as a little boy when he had been so alarmed, she might lose him after all.

  The shadowy figure abruptly disappeared, and then the bench with the man making the bomb disappeared as well. Player groaned and threw one arm over his eyes and swore in his native language. “Damn it, Zyah,” he said finally.

  She ignored him and went to the bathroom to get a cool washcloth for his head, just as she had every night for the past few nights. Kneeling beside him, she wiped off the little beads of sweat. “It wasn’t as bad this time. You’re getting better.”

  “Or you’re just getting faster.”

  “I’m really good,” Zyah said. “Dancing around the room, and you missed it.”

  He groaned. “That’s not funny.”

  “It wasn’t meant to be. I thought I was really sexy when I danced. Most men think I’m sexy. You’re the exception, it seems.” She tried to tease him. Make it humorous when she’d been so afraid. The ticking of the clock had been terrifying.

  He took his arm away from his eyes. Now they were piercing blue, icy daggers. “That’s really not funny.”

  She wiped down his throat. “You’re in a foul mood, but then you usually are when you’re around me. You don’t like me. You don’t have to. I’m one of those girls. You apologized and all, but you didn’t mean it. We fucked all night, over and over.” She forced herself to say the words as crudely as possible, wanting them imprinted in her brain. “I get it. Some men think women who do that sort of thing are nasty girls or something. I don’t know. Somehow, it’s okay for the men but not for the women.”

  She avoided looking into his eyes when she said it because, honestly, just saying the sentiment aloud turned her stomach. Still, it was true. She’d come across so many men who thought that way. Not that she was promiscuous, far from it, but she didn’t judge other women and didn’t feel they should be judged. She wasn’t even certain she believed that was the reason he didn’t want to be around her. She hadn’t found that in him. He didn’t seem judgmental. She didn’t know what the reason was. Only that he didn’t want her. Maybe she just needed a reason, any reason. It was just that he kept pushing her away.

  He caught her wrist. “Zyah. Look at me. You don’t believe that.”

  She didn’t answer him. She wasn’t going to get into an argument. Actions spoke far louder than words, and so far, he could barely stand to look at her. “Let go. I have to get the washcloth cold again. You’re burning up.”

  He swore again and pushed into a sitting position. She really avoided looking at him because he was all corded muscle. No one should have that kind of muscle. She remembered tracing every single one of them with her tongue. Ashamed, she turned away from him and slipped off the bed. Ordinarily, she hurried to the bathroom, so she could make his skin cooler, make him more comfortable. Now, she took her time, not wanting to get back to him so fast, needing a few moments to get herself back under control.

  She could do this. She was strong. She repeated the mantra to herself over and over. She just had to get through a few more days. His brain injury was healed. It was just the nightmares. She had to find a way to stop the nightmares and the migraines. If she could do that . . . He was getting stronger, although as long as he was there, her grandmother was safe. She had to keep that in mind. Torpedo Ink stayed close because they stayed near Player.

  Player had a pillow behind his head, but he was sitting up, sheet pulled up to his hips. She tried not to look at his body. He wore something, she saw the edging just above the single sheet covering him. It wasn’t much, and one leg was out. She knew his body. Every inch of it. Still, she averted her eyes and handed him the washcloth rather than wipe his face, neck and chest th
e way she normally would have.

  “I’ll get a towel.” She was suddenly aware of her own lack of clothing. What if he thought she was coming on to him? She always wore a racerback tank and little shorts. Long pants twisted around her legs and drove her nuts when she slept. Mostly, she slept in the nude. Not that she’d do that with Player in her bed, and anyway, she was sitting up in a chair most of the night now.

  “Zyah.” He tried to catch her wrist and missed. “For fuck’s sake, sit down next to me. You have been every damn night. What you’ve been thinking is pure bullshit, and it doesn’t even make sense. So, for the love of God, will you stop making my head hurt worse and get your sweet little ass over here before I have to get up and get you?”

  She stood in the middle of the room frowning at him. “You are an ass. A complete and utter ass. I have no idea why I ever thought you were anything but an ass.” She had to do something to save herself, because after seeing his childhood and spending every night with him for four straight weeks, she was so in love with him she couldn’t stand herself.

  He threw back the sheet and was out of the bed so fast she barely had time to turn to sprint for the door. She even squealed like a little girl, but muffled the sound with her hand just in case she woke her grandmother, which was unlikely since she was downstairs.

  Player caught her around the waist, tossed her over his shoulder so she was upside down and marched back to the bed. She should have protested, should have done something, anything at all, to stop him, but a million butterflies took wing. Her sex clenched, wept with sheer need. She wanted him. She’d wanted him every time she thought about him. It was a sin. It was so wrong. He was her obsession.

  He threw her easily right into the center of the mattress and came down on top of her before she could move, pinning her down. Zyah went very still. He might have had a brain injury, but Steele had somehow miraculously healed him. Now the rest of his body was working just fine. She knew because she felt every single inch of him hard and tight against her. She knew his body, all those defined muscles, the wide shoulders, the deep chest that went into that impressive rib cage and narrowed into his hips. His cock was beautiful. She knew because she’d worshipped him with her hands and mouth. With her body. She could still taste him. Feel him inside her.