"I don't know what I deserve," she said. "But if you ever cared for me, give me something to take away."
In answer he brushed his fingers up the length of her stocking, seeking bare flesh. Her unadorned, knee-length drawers posed no barrier to him. He opened them and touched her moist skin.
She arched up into his caresses. The memory of the last time flooded into her mind, joining with the present. She feared that her body's completion might come too fast, before she could feel Quentin moving inside her.
"Don't… wait," she begged.
He whispered unintelligible endearments and joined her on the mattress. He parted her legs with his hands, raising her skirts to her waist.
Too slow. She didn't want his tenderness now, only to be possessed, claimed by him forever. She seized the front of his shirt to bring him closer and all but tore at the buttons of his trousers. He was hard under her fingertips. She set him free and held him between her hands.
"Do you wish to make us both suffer?" she demanded fiercely. "Do you?"
He closed his eyes with a groan and flung himself down upon her. The drumming of his heartbeat pierced her bodice, the flesh and bone beneath to mingle with her own heart's frantic pace. His skin was burning where it touched her, the cloth of his trousers deliciously rough on her flesh. His hips found their natural cradle between her thighs, and just as she rose to meet him she felt the clean, swift thrust of his entry.
Nothing had prepared her for this. There was an instant of discomfort, and then a sweet ache more beautiful than anything they'd done before. He moved, withdrew, then thrust again. Fire filled her womb. She throbbed in time to his motions, each pulse drawing him deeper.
He kissed her lips and her chin and her cheeks, murmuring her name like a nonsensical rhyme. She clenched her legs about his waist. Abruptly, with stunning ease, he lifted her from the mattress and carried her, still impaled, to the nearest wall. He held her there, his strong hands cupping her buttocks, and thrust again and again, making her feel what it was to be in another's power and willingly submit.
It was that surrender that finally pushed her over the brink. Her body and her mind ceased all resistance. She gasped and pressed her head back against the wall as the waves of pleasure came. Still he did not finish, not until the pulsing had stopped and she went boneless in his arms. Then, with one last great thrust, he found his own completion.
He kissed her and let her slide to the floor. When her legs trembled in reaction, he swept her up and carried her back to the blankets, drawing her into his lap. She felt raw and fragile and lost in bliss.
Bliss that couldn't last. It had no more substance than the fog outside these walls, no more solidity than sand on the ocean shore.
Like sand, it slipped through her fingers and was gone. But it left in its wake the hard, bright knowledge of what must be done.
She was afraid. Fear had been an abstract concept before this moment, no matter how much she'd thought herself capable of it. Never before had so much been at stake.
If she failed in this, it would mean Quentin's sanity, if not his life. It might mean letting loose a creature prone to violence few men could envision, and relinquishing Quentin's chance to fetter Boroskov.
She didn't know if she could do what her plan demanded. Her deficiencies had become all too clear, and all too deadly. She must be far more daring, more cool-headed, and more skillful than her best image of herself, let alone the flawed woman she'd turned out to be.
Her mouth went dry, and her heart beat so loudly that Quentin must have heard. He shifted her about and held her face steady between his hands.
"What is it?" he asked. "Did I hurt you, Johanna?"
"No." She swallowed. "There is something I must tell you, Quentin."
The slightly dazed look left his eyes. His mouth tightened. "Tell me."
"I love you."
He laughed in startlement, and saw Johanna's face. She was serious. More than serious; she was giving him the most precious gift she had.
Johanna—his grave, beloved Johanna, gazed at him as if he were someone worthy of love. As if they sat in a rose-scented bower, and he were the gentleman he was born to be, she the brave and true lady her soul and spirit made her.
"Johanna," he said, choking back ridiculous tears. "God."
"I know it's hardly a suitable time to make such a declaration." She wriggled from his hold and stood, shaking her skirts down around her ankles as if she dismissed what had just passed between them. "In light of what we've just done…"
"Do you know what we've done?" he asked. "I've been with other women, yes. But none of them—not one of them—" How could he tell her that he could take her a hundred times more and not get his fill of her? She made him feel formidable, sure of himself, the man he might have been.
Might have been, but was not. Johanna carried that Quentin away with her and sent the familiar craven Quentin back in his place. The man who was so very good at running.
The man who couldn't speak the words she wanted to hear.
Her back was turned to him, head high, spine erect. The pliable, passionate woman slipped from her body like a ghost. What remained was not Doctor Johanna Schell but some brittle reproduction held together by filaments of habit and sheer pluck, a doppelgänger who spoke with Johanna's voice in a parody of her competent manner.
"Forgive me," she said. "It was foolish of me to speak as I did, but I was not sure I'd get another chance."
"Johanna," he whispered.
"We need not dwell on it any longer. In fact, we must put it behind us now if we are to save ourselves." Her shoulders rose and fell. "I have an idea, Quentin. A dangerous idea, and so much of it depends upon you. I do not know if I am capable of what is necessary."
He stood up, took a few steps toward her, stopped at the stiffening of her body. She took another deep breath. "You've said that you wish to go with Boroskov and find a way to overcome him. But I believe there is a chance to defeat him, here and now, by confronting him with what he would never expect to see."
Dire premonition turned guilt and grief to icy lumps in his chest. "Fenris."
"Fenris." She turned to face him, her expression blank. "Boroskov knows nothing of him, though your other self is the embodiment of what his father, and your grandfather, desired to create."
"Something evil, murderous—"
"But Fenris is a part of you, Quentin. He has your werewolf abilities, as well as the very traits of character that make him an equal to Boroskov in ruthlessness and lust for power. Don't you see?"
"I see. I see very clearly."
"Then… we have no choice but to enlist Fenris's help in defeating Boroskov."
The last remnants of the ephemeral well-being that had come with their loving drained from Quentin's body. "Yes," he said. "Get Fenris to fight in my place, because he is the last thing our enemy will be expecting. The only problem with your otherwise excellent idea is that I've already tried it. I can't make him come."
"You've tried to summon Fenris?" She frowned. "But you've never truly met him, only sensed his presence—"
"Just before I found you and May and Boroskov, I woke up in another part of town with no memory of how I'd arrived in San Francisco. It hasn't been long since Fenris was here. But now—he is gone."
Her eyes darkened. "How can this be?"
"Oh, I'm not free of him. He still perverts our joint existence as he wishes it to be. I'd rip him out of my soul if I could."
"That is what you cannot do." She held his gaze unblinkingly. "I know little of this, Quentin. It is beyond my meager experience. But I think that you must find a way to accept him as part of yourself."
"Part of myself? Should I let him use and discard you, and destroy everything in his path? Is that what you want me to be, Johanna?"
Her jaw clenched. "No. But you can't simply erase him. He won't let you. You and Fenris are two halves of what was meant to be a single whole. Neither one of you is… complete without the other. An
d now he has the means, perhaps the only means, of saving us all."
Her theory made a bizarre kind of sense. He felt the merciless logic of it, though his insides turned to ice. Fenris, the lost piece of the puzzle, the final answer.
"Even if you're right," he said, "why should he help us? What has he to gain?"
"It is true that he's said that he intends to displace you, Quentin—just as you want to erase him. That is part of the risk. The greater part. But you will not be alone." He caught a glimpse of her heart in her eyes. "We shall contact him through hypnosis. I will be with you. But you must be willing to let him out, under our control. Yours and mine, together. You must truly face him for the first time in your life."
He sat down, too numb to remain on his feet. "You think that I can influence such a monster?"
"Fenris has no friends, no brothers. If you convince him that he is more than your brother—if you embrace him rather than reject him…"
Quentin smiled through his terror. "Embrace?"
"His needs are yours, Quentin. He must be acknowledged, for he was your creation, and he suffered on your behalf."
"My creation, born of my cowardice."
"You were a child. You were not to blame. But now you know Fenris exists, and why."
And only Fenris could kill Boroskov.
Quentin slammed his fist into the wall, feeling it give under the blow. "He'll be our hired assassin," he said hoarsely. "But the blood will still be on these." He raised his hands and rotated them slowly. "I'll become what he is."
He waited for another facile answer, but none came. Her eyes welled up with the tears she must have been fighting all along. She crumpled in on herself. The counterfeit Johanna Schell became a vulnerable young woman who questioned everything she'd ever believed worthy and strong and true in her own nature.
It struck him with the full force of revelation that this was her greatest fear, that she lacked the skill to do what she proposed; not that he didn't return her feelings or rejected her love, but that she would ultimately fail them both.
He turned his face to the wall, unable to hide his emotions. He ached to hold her close and assure her that it would be all right. To tell her that he loved her.
But he couldn't. And with that realization came a second revelation, too overwhelming to deny.
Words of love and empty platitudes were not what Johanna needed from him now. What she required most was the strength, the fortitude, the self-reliance that was so much a part of her being. She needed to remember that she was a doctor of great skill and bravery.
By admitting her love to him, by loving him, she had relinquished the very qualities she most needed to win the coming war. If he denied her this chance she'd never regain the spirit and assurance to continue with her work. She would be ruined in every way that mattered.
To do what she asked, he must hold fast all the way to his soul. No running, no slipping away. The surrender he must make was to his deepest self and the memories that had created him.
He had to do it for her. For Johanna.
He stood up and strode toward her, stopping mere inches away.
"Very well," he said roughly, "Let us proceed."
"No." She bowed her head. "I was wrong to suggest it. I recognize that I am no longer fit—"
"Fit?" He took her by the shoulders and made her look at him. "You think that you are fatally flawed, don't you, Johanna? You've made too many mistakes. You've misjudged. You don't trust yourself, and you don't expect anyone else to trust you, either. You have your theories, but you have no confidence in them. You're just going to… give up."
Her body trembled violently. "You don't understand. If I'm wrong—"
"Have you suddenly lost all the skills you had when I first came to the Haven?"
She stared at him. "No, I—"
"You still know how to hypnotize me, I presume."
"Yes."
"That's how you'll call out Fenris, so that I can face him."
"Yes, but—"
"We don't have much time. You'd better get started."
She pulled free, jerking up her chin with a touch of the old spirit. "I cannot be within your mind, Quentin. I can only begin the process. In the end, you must fight three battles—with Fenris, with Boroskov, and with yourself. You must ally with Fenris to win over Boroskov, become the guiding intellect behind Fenris's hatred. Without you, there can be no victory."
"Without you, we haven't a chance in hell." He grinned. "But damned if I don't love a challenge."
Chapter 24
Johanna's heart broke into a thousand pieces and slowly, bit by bit, reassembled itself. It bathed in the healing warmth of Quentin's grin, took strength from the enormity of his faith in her, grew until it stretched the walls of her ribs and expanded beyond the mere physical boundaries of flesh.
The gift of his trust held her heart safe, like a magical coffer made of precious gold and priceless stones hidden in a cave on the highest mountaintop. She'd asked that he be strong, and he was—strong in the face of fear she knew as well as she did her own. His great courage lay in his willingness to confront his fear, and challenge her to do the same.
She'd been sure, for so long, that love was a luxury she could ill afford. When she let down her guard, it had happened just as she predicted: Once she opened the gates to emotion, she could not close them again. Out spilled the fear, the doubts, the indecisiveness, the despair, weaknesses that stripped away the unassailable facade of Dr. Johanna Schell. The rational moorings upon which she'd built her life snapped and sent her crashing down into bedlam.
That Dr. Schell had been extinguished, and the new creature born out of the ferment was blind and deaf and nameless, searching desperately for identity in the midst of chaos, prepared to grasp at any anchor. She was close to becoming the very thing she most despised: dependent and helpless.
Looking into Quentin's eyes, she recognized the truth. His only hope was to acknowledge and unite both halves of himself. She was no different.
She must summon her doctor's skills to give Quentin the chance he needed, but she could no longer rely on the old definitions of competence. Rationality was not enough. If she rejected her emotions, her fear, her love, she would be fighting with only half a weapon. Dr. Johanna Schell had not disappeared; she had merely evolved.
Love was her anchor. Love for this man, who'd turned her life upside down, who'd begun to heal a physician who hadn't learned how to heal herself.
Overcome with gratitude, Johanna stretched up to kiss him. He stepped just out of reach and averted his face before her lips touched his.
It hurt. She couldn't guess which of her many shortcomings, or his regrets, made him withdraw. But what might have been a devastating blow was a minor bruise she could and must bear. Love remained steady and sound, unaffected by anything Quentin Forster, Fenris, or Boroskov could do or say.
"Please sit down, Quentin," she said evenly. "If you are ready, we will begin."
Aware that Boroskov might return at any moment, Johanna ushered Quentin into a trance as quickly as she dared and, with a whispered prayer, called Fenris out of the darkness.
It was like shouting into a chasm miles deep. Minutes ticked by. Johanna tried every trick she knew, and still Fenris didn't answer.
Quentin had warned her that Fenris was gone. She didn't believe it. He was waiting, holed up like a hibernating bear, dangerous to wake and biding his time for his own incomprehensible purpose.
Then she remembered what Fenris wanted more than anything in the world except permanent mastery of Quentin's body. She had asked Quentin to try to accept Fenris as a part of himself. How could he do so if she refused to accept Fenris the same way?
Accept him, even submit to his lust. Another risk she had to take.
"Fenris," she said. "I know you hear me. I am waiting for you. I need you. I need you, Fenris."
Quentin jerked.
"Come to me," she coaxed, her voice filled with promises. "Help me."
The muscles in Quentin's face suddenly shifted, swiftly completing the subtle but distinct change to the coarser features of his other self. His eyes snapped open and focused on her.
Her comparison of Fenris to a hibernating bear was apt indeed. He lunged up from the mattress and stalked toward her, every line of his body shouting violent intent.
"You want my help?" he snarled. "I still have some use to you, now that he's had you?"
She could only guess what it had been like for Fenris to experience Quentin's life as an observer, watching and unable to interfere as she lay with Quentin at the Haven, seizing control only to lose it again before he could complete his goal.
"Yes, Fenris," she said, refusing to flinch. "You know of Boroskov—"
He grabbed her by the arms, almost lifting her from her feet. "I know everything. You gave yourself to the weakling. But I brought you here, didn't I?" His fingers bit into her sleeves. "Now you're in trouble because of him. But when I save your pretty little neck, you plan to get rid of me, don't you?" He gave her a shake. "Don't you?"
Of course. He hadn't been so far "gone" that he'd failed to hear her discussion with Quentin. The only defense she had left was to make him understand.
"Haven't you always defended Quentin from his enemies, and yours?" she asked, ignoring the pain. "You and Quentin share a fate, just as you share a body. You can't escape what happens to him."
"You're calling me a coward?"
"Quentin said you were gone, even when he tried to find you. You ran from Boroskov, didn't you? You buried yourself deep, because you know that what Boroskov wants is worse than anything Quentin could do. Worse than anything you could be."
He let her drop. "Boroskov is like me," he said. "Why shouldn't I ally myself with him?"
"Because you won't be anyone's slave. Because you know he'll eventually destroy you. Because he embraces the evils that you endured for Quentin's sake."
"Words. Boroskov wants power. I want the same thing."
"No. You want the pain to stop."
"And when it stops, I'll be gone. There won't be anything left." He bared his teeth, but the gesture was ruined by the quivering of his mouth. "Quentin will have you. I'll have nothing."
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