Born to Darkness

by Suzanne Brockmann

  He’d stopped kissing her to position her at a better angle to receive him, and her eyes were closed, her lips slightly parted. Each breath she took, each ragged inhale and exhale was part-gasp, part-sigh, and he found himself wanting to stay here like this, forever, just watching her face. This woman in his arms was a master at hiding her feelings—except when she had sex. Her pleasure—pure and unfettered—turned her into an open book, and God, how he loved that.

  “Hey,” Shane breathed, but it wasn’t until he slowed their near-frantic pace to an almost-stop that she opened eyes that were luminous with desire to look at him.

  “Don’t,” she whispered back as she closed her eyes again. But then she caught her lower lip between her teeth and swallowed a moan as he pushed himself home. Shane kissed her—how could he not?—before he breathed, “Don’t what?” into her eager mouth.“Stop,” she gasped.

  “I haven’t stopped,” he pointed out even though he redefined the word slowly as he withdrew from her softness and heat.

  “Don’t be a dick,” she said as she tried to follow him, tried to keep him from pulling out, tightening her legs around his waist. But he moved her away from the wall, and lifted her off of him so there was nowhere for her to go. She dug her fingers into his back. “Come on, Navy, you know what I like.”

  If she’d used his real name, he might’ve given her exactly what she wanted.

  “I am pretty certain, Dr. Mackenzie,” Shane murmured instead, as he lowered her onto him just as slowly, as he pressed her again back against the wall, as she again tried—but this time failed—to keep herself from moaning, “that you like this, too.”

  “Oh, God,” she gasped, as he began another long, slow retreat, as she again tried to keep him from leaving her, “oh, please, oh, don’t, Shane, don’t!”

  She opened her eyes again then, and this time they were luminous with tears. He was so surprised that he froze. But just like that, it was gone and maybe he’d imagined it, but he didn’t think so because now she was angry, and she said, “Don’t try to make this something that it’s not! And god damn you! Don’t look at me like that!”

  “Like what?” he said. “I’m just … looking at you.”

  “With those eyes!” she said.

  “Well, yeah,” he said. “Because I kinda use my eyes to see, so—”

  “Just don’t look at me!” she said. “Just … I want …” She pulled his head toward her and kissed him so hard, it was almost as if she were trying to suck his soul from his body.

  Somehow she pulled him back, and Shane felt her shoulders hit the wall with way more force than he would have liked, but he couldn’t stop her. And Jesus, she’d cranked her voodoo up to ten, and when she began to move against him—hard and fast, the way they’d started, the way she said she liked it—his body strained to respond.

  What she was doing to him was crazy and literally out of control, because he had no power to stop or slow what was happening. He was done. Just like that. It was over. He just came in a hot rush as she, too, unraveled around him.

  And, God, he wasn’t the only one who’d exploded—all around them lightbulbs were flaring and popping, and the electrical outlet on the wall by his legs was buzzing and sparking.

  The comm-station printer must’ve had a power overload, because it whirred and rattled and celebrated by printing out a full page that was probably an alignment test sheet. It probably didn’t say Fuck yeah! interspersed with Hoo-yah!, but it should have.

  Because right now, Shane’s personal alignment was fucking perfect.

  “Computer, report integration level.” Mac spoke with her face still pressed against Shane’s neck, her legs still locked around him, and for a moment he thought she was maybe speaking another language because he couldn’t figure out what she was asking him over the slowly fading roar in his ears.

  But when the computer answered her—“Sixty-three percent integration”—through a heavy stream of static, he finally understood.

  Sex—with him—had increased Mac’s integration level enormously. Higher even than Stephen Diaz, which was unbelievable.

  “Computer, report any changes,” Mac said. “Any at all. Audio response open and ongoing.”

  “Sixty-two-point-nine-nine-eight,” the computer immediately responded, the static clearing a little.

  “Shit.”

  “Sixty-two-point-five-nine-seven.”

  “Computer, only report whole number changes,” Mac ordered.

  Shane lifted his head—he’d ended up with his face pressed against the wall, his hands still filled with Mac’s incredible ass, his arms guilty of some definite wobble from the workout, his legs decidedly weakened but happy nonetheless.

  But when he started to shift, to try to give her as graceful and elegant a dismount as possible, considering that she was still half-dressed and his pants were flapping around his boots, hobbling him, she tightened her grip on him and again said, “Don’t!”

  So he didn’t. He didn’t move. He didn’t even speak, but maybe she knew he was going to, because she added, “Shhh! Just, shhh!”

  Okay. She was clearly doing something—he had no idea what, but it was obvious she felt it was vitally important.

  “Sixty,” the computer reported then, “Fifty-eight. Fifty-seven.”

  “What the fuck …?” Mac lifted her head and opened her eyes, and there they were nose to nose. “Why am I dropping so fast?”

  Before Shane could respond, she added, “Computer, explain,” and the computer answered for him. “Answer unknown. Fifty-five.”

  “How can I help?” Shane asked Mac, even though the exertion from continuing to hold her there like that was making him sweat.

  “I thought I’d have more time,” she said and the despair on her face was so honest and raw, just looking into her eyes made his heart lodge in his throat.

  “I don’t know what you’re doing,” Shane told her as he held her gaze, as he willed her to believe him, as he forced his arms not to shake. “But if there’s anything—at all—that you think I can do …”

  She didn’t answer. She just looked at him.

  So he pushed. “At least tell me what you’re trying—is it that emotional grid thing? Are you searching for that man, Caine?”

  Mac closed her eyes as she nodded. “For a second I thought … I thought maybe I felt him …”

  “But that’s great,” Shane enthused. “Mac, that’s amazing. Hey, come on, don’t look so disappointed. We got you up to sixty-three, right? I’m pretty confident we can do it again—hell, I’m certain. Just aim a little more of your voodoo at me, and I’m ready to go, right now. And if you can’t do that—for whatever reason—the room service guy can bring some Viagra with lunch. Wait—I keep forgetting—he’s the prison-cell service guy. Although right about now, with the prospect of an immediate replay in my exceedingly bright future, I’m just not feeling all that terrible about being locked up.”

  Mac opened her eyes to look at him, but the despair hadn’t left her face—if anything, it had gotten worse. Shane felt his heart lurch and he knew saying, Please, please, please don’t shut me out, would make her do just that. So instead he said, “Smiley face emoticon?” and he made a face that was half-anxious, half-smile, which did what he hoped it would.

  It made her roll her eyes and exhale a laugh.

  So he pushed even harder and, all kidding aside, he quietly told her, “I know you’re used to solving problems on your own, and sometimes the hardest thing in the world can be accepting help, but … Let me help.”

  “Fifty-seven,” the computer announced. “Fifty-eight.”

  “Whoa,” Shane said. Mac’s integration levels were … going back up?

  But she didn’t look happy. In fact, she looked stunned and then horrified as the computer continued. “Sixty. Sixty-one. Sixty-two.”

  “Oh, shit,” she whispered, as tears filled her eyes. And this time, Shane knew that he wasn’t imagining it, because this time two very fat tears esc
aped and rolled unchecked down her face, followed by more as—Jesus—Mac started to cry.

  Anna wasn’t alone.

  She’d been caught in this nightmare—and even though it seemed and felt more real than any dream she’d ever had, she knew it had to be a nightmare, because it was happening to her over and over and over again.

  Plus, there was something even worse that was happening, something that had to do with Nika, but what exactly it was remained elusively out of her grasp as David slapped her and she fell, then tried to scramble away.

  She failed, as she’d failed before and before that.

  But this time, as David drove his fingers into the tangle of her hair and savagely pulled, as she cried out in pain and disbelief, as she felt him slam himself into her with enough force to bruise and tear, she heard a voice in her head that wasn’t there before.

  Low and calm, with the diction and elocution of a 1940s-era movie star: We’re going to stop looping now, okay? Don’t move. He’s almost done and I know we’re going to want to move, to do what we did, to get away, to get out of here, but we can’t or the loop won’t break. Think of quicksand. I know you’ve never been trapped, but you’ve seen movies, read stories.… Struggling makes you sink. We have to float, spread out, stay still. It goes against every instinct, I know, but if we do this, now, David will vanish and we’ll be … Where do we want to be?

  And just like that, the voice was right, and David was gone, only now Anna was trapped in a pit of quicksand, gluey and yellowish and stinking of rot. And in that first second as her weight took her down, as her feet scrambled for a toehold and found nothing to support her, the muddy slime went over her head and she felt a flare of panic.

  I’ve got you. You’re safe.

  And she felt herself lifted up and pulled out as she coughed and spat and wiped the muck from her face and eyes.

  And there was Joseph Bach, standing on solid ground, dressed like a Disney prince. And she realized that his had been the voice in her head, that he had been with her. He hadn’t left her there, alone. And she didn’t know whether to feel grateful or mortified as she moved through the air like some kind of nasty version of Tinker Bell. As her feet gently touched the ground, she realized—of course—that she was naked. But Joseph—also of course—was there with a blanket to cover her as she sank down to the ground, her legs pulled in tightly against her chest. She let him wrap that blanket around her, holding on to both it and herself to try to keep from shaking.

  “What does it say about me,” she asked him, “that I actually prefer being trapped in quicksand than thinking about …?”

  But God, the nothingness around them seemed almost to quiver and change back into the walls of David’s house.

  Joseph grabbed her. Don’t think about that!

  To her complete surprise, he kissed her, but then she realized that he wasn’t kissing her, he’d just pulled her back with him, somewhere she didn’t recognize, somewhere she’d never been before. And she realized that she was now inside of his head, and that this was his memory.

  And he wasn’t kissing her—well, he was kissing her, but she wasn’t Anna Taylor. She was someone else. Someone with much paler skin and reddish blond hair. Someone who was closer to Nika’s age than her own.

  And then she was laughing softly as she joined him beneath the covers of what Anna somehow knew was Joseph’s bed, in Joseph’s room. But this was clearly a memory from years ago, when he was barely older than this girl himself.

  “Annie, my God, what are you doing?” His voice cracked.

  “What I want to do before you go,” the girl told him. “What you want, too.” She laughed. “Or you wouldn’t have left your window open so I could climb in.”

  “Ah, God,” he breathed as she pulled off the T-shirt and dungarees she’d put on to make the journey across the fields in the dark, as she pressed herself against his warmth.

  “We should be married right now,” she whispered. “This should have been our wedding night—and I say we are married in the eyes of God. To hell with what my parents say.”

  “They only want what’s best for you.”

  “You’re what’s best for me,” she said and kissed him.

  This is the place I always ran to, whenever I needed to run. To lose myself. To save myself. To punish myself. It’s an equal opportunity memory. Not as awful as yours—not for the same reasons, anyway.

  Anna turned, suddenly apart from and outside of the two young lovers, suddenly aware that she was watching them from the darkness in the corner of the room. Joseph was beside her, and she could feel his longing and sorrow, his regret and grief—and she knew that this girl, whoever she was, was no longer alive.

  I’m sorry, she told him.

  I am, too.

  He opened the door for her, relentlessly polite, and she went through it and into a narrow, dark hallway, suspecting that they could have passed through the walls if they’d wanted to.

  It was then that Anna realized they were dressed as they were before—he in his princely get-up, she with only that blanket wrapped tightly around her. She still had mud from the quicksand on her, caked in her hair and beneath her fingernails, and she knew that he’d saved her yet again, by pulling her into this memory that he’d just as soon not have to relive.

  He looked back one last time at the golden-haired girl in the bed before following Anna out of the room. He closed the door gently behind him, then led the way along the dark, narrow hall to a flight of stairs that went downward.

  “This is the house where I grew up,” he said, glancing back at her. “I haven’t been back here in a long time.”

  “What happened to her?” Anna asked as she followed him into a quaint-looking living room, filled with antiques. It was dark in there, with no lights turned on, but somehow she could see.“Annie.”

  “She took her own life,” Joseph told her.

  She stopped short. “Oh, God. You shouldn’t have brought me here—”

  “I didn’t have a lot of time to pick and choose our destination.” He sat down on a rather stiff-looking sofa that had a straight and barely padded back.

  “And you couldn’t have picked, I don’t know, a frat party at your college or—”

  “I didn’t go to parties at college,” he said. “Please sit. Or don’t sit. But listen, okay? We have just a minute—seconds now—before you’re going to wake up, and you need to know that you shouldn’t be afraid. I’m on the bed with you, I’m holding you, but there’s nothing …” He stopped himself, started again. “It’s not meant to be sexual. You were shaking and … Plus it helps for me to be as close as possible while I maintain telepathic contact. Bottom line, I didn’t want you to be alone, especially when I realized what was happening.”

  “The loop,” she said.

  He nodded. But then sighed. “If you ever want to talk about it—”

  “I don’t.” She shook her head. “This shouldn’t be about me. We were trying to reach Nika. Did you connect with her?”

  He shook his head no. “You had a negative reaction to the sleep aid.”

  “Shit.”

  He smiled at that, but only briefly. “Look, if you change your mind about—”

  “Thank you,” Anna said. “But no. I went to counseling. I’m over it.”

  He didn’t call her on it, but she could tell that he didn’t believe her.

  Instead, he said, “Time’s up. Your eyes are going to open now. And it’s not going to be awkward. For either of us. It’s just going to … be. On three … two …”

  One.

  Anna opened her eyes to find herself nose to nose with Joseph Bach, his arms tightly around her as they lay together on top of that bed in lab seven. From this proximity, his eyes were very brown and his lashes ridiculously thick and long.

  Her hair had come out of her ponytail, and some of it was in his face. She was glad to see that the quicksand had stayed safely back in the caverns of their minds.

  And even though
he had to spit some of her hair out of his mouth, his being there wasn’t awkward—despite everything they’d just shared. And Anna knew that he’d probably done some sort of hypnosis on her back in his childhood living room, similar to the way he’d gotten her into his car, out in front of her apartment.

  But with Nika still missing, she didn’t want to waste time on the inconsequential, so she cut to the chase.

  “Can we try this again,” she asked him, “without the drugs?”

  It was only then, as Bach released her and sat up, pushing his own hair back out of his face, that she noticed his hands were shaking. Still, he didn’t hesitate to nod. “Absolutely,” he said. “Let’s just let Elliot check you out first.”

  “Sixty,” the computer in Shane’s apartment reported. “Sixty-two. Fifty-seven. Sixty-one. Fifty-six. Sixty-two.”

  Mac’s integration levels were erratic. She was flopping all over the place like a fish on a dock.

  She was also royally screwed.

  This was Tim, all over again. Except Shane was no mere Tim. He was Tim times a thousand. He was a million times the man Tim could only ever hope to be.

  And Mac? She had no one to blame but herself. Fool that she was, she’d been playing with fire. And now that she’d gotten this far, she couldn’t turn back. Not while the very real possibility of finding Devon Caine hung out there, almost within grasp.

  Worse thing yet, she couldn’t stop her tears—she was crying like a little girl who’d lost her puppy. And Shane didn’t fuck-up his current standing as the world’s nicest guy by saying something dickish, like, Hey, it’ll be okay, or Don’t cry, baby, it’s not that bad, or even, I’m sorry, when he had no real clue why she was crying.

  Instead, he gallantly provided her with an acceptable excuse for her emotional outburst as he looked at her with those eyes and said, “I want to find Nika, too.”

  “Sixty-one. Sixty-two. Sixty-one …”

  And then Shane leaned in and kissed her so sweetly that if she hadn’t already been crying, she would’ve started.

  As Mac closed her eyes and kissed him back, she knew what she had to do. She had to let go of her fear and accept what she was feeling.