Acceptable Risks (19 page)

Lark sighed and rubbed her forehead. “Okay, then what?”

“We lock him down.” Jason paused at the open door to examine the lock she’d jimmied. “Credit card?”

“Driver’s license.”

“Clever.”

She smiled. “Thanks.”

They moved swiftly down the stairs. None of the house’s other inhabitants seemed disturbed by the noise. The music downstairs continued to blare, but when they got outside, she noticed the front apartments’ lights were all off now.

She almost ran up the back of Jason’s leg when he stopped abruptly on the sidewalk.

“That’s my bike,” he declared.

“Yeah.” Lark pulled out the keys.

“My motorcycle,” he said as if she hadn’t understood.

“Yeah, I know. It’s how I got here.”

Jason hung his head, his jaw tensing. “You rode my motorcycle.”

“Uh,
yeah
. Can we do the macho he-man routine later? I couldn’t have saved your ass if I hadn’t taken the bike. I assume you prefer to ride it back?” She dangled the keys. “Where’s the Rover? I’ll haul Nils to the house.”

Jason’s face darkened as he looked up at the sky and audibly ground his teeth.

“No,” he finally grunted. “You take the bike back to the house. I’ll follow you with him.” He gave Nils a shake. “And then we’ll all go.”

Lark almost asked “go where?” but swallowed it, hard. First, he wasn’t going to say, not out in the open here. Second…well, he was still a little pissed.

She waited until he and Nils disappeared in the darkness down the unlit street, heading for his truck, before starting the bike. No sense riling him further if she made a mistake or something. In fact, she’d better go ahead so he didn’t see the way she drove it. She carefully rode down the street, then kicked it up a notch once she’d turned the corner.

The bike was wiped down and covered by its tarp and Lark stood on the street, waiting, when Jason pulled up. She climbed into the passenger seat and closed her door before he got the vehicle to a complete stop.

“Where are we going?” She pulled on her seatbelt and twisted to look for Nils. He wasn’t in the back seat, and she couldn’t see the floor of the cargo area. “He in the back?”

“A place I know. And yes. And don’t talk to me.”

Hurt, she turned to face front again. “Okay.” After a second, she pulled the hand sanitizer from the console, popped the top, and held it out. Jason hesitated, then gave her his cupped palm. She squirted some sanitizer into it. The tension lightened, even though he still didn’t speak.

They drove in sulky silence for about twenty minutes. Jason pulled onto a dirt road or driveway that wound through overgrown grassland and around a copse of trees before it ended in front of a barn. There was no house in sight.

“Ah, the grain silo. Good hiding place. No corners or edges for him to commit suicide on before we can beat the information out of him.”

Jason didn’t respond to her lame attempt at humor. Lark threw up her hands, then trailed behind as Jason got Nils out of the truck and dragged him to the barn. She half expected him to key a code into a box and open a passage to an underground lair, but he only dropped the sniffling weasel into a horse stall.

“Will that hold him?” Lark examined the metal bars at the top of the door. They lined the gaps between stalls, too, and the wood seemed sturdy enough, with no gaps at floor level, and no window in the outside wall. The hard-packed dirt floor held only a few wisps of straw.

“For now.” Jason shoved a huge bolt home and tested the non-existent wiggle of the door. “Come on.”

He led her to the other end of the barn, out of earshot of Nils. He moved more naturally now. She assumed he was back to full strength, but his stride was as hard and abrupt as his tone had been.

They went into a room she supposed would normally have been a tack room and office. The dividing wall had been knocked down except for some beams framing the space. White paint covered everything except a scratched wooden desk and a narrow bed with its headboard against one wall. Jason pulled a plastic-wrapped bundle of linens from a trunk and shook sheets and a blanket out of it.

“What’s going on?”

“It’s the middle of the night. We’re going to bed.” He started putting a mattress pad over the mattress. Lark went to the other side to help him.

“Should we keep watch on Nils?”

“He can’t get out of there. The bolt on the door is too low for him to reach. And even if he can, there’s nowhere for him to go. For the drive, I tied him in the back of the truck so he couldn’t sit up. He has no idea where we are or what’s out there.”

The closer they got to the bed being ready, the more tired she was. Whatever emotions and adrenaline had been driving her the last few hours were gone. “This is a pretty small bed,” she pointed out.

“I’m exhausted, Lark.” Jason yanked a pillowcase over a pillow he pulled out of the trunk and handed it to her. “You have nothing to worry about.”

“You might,” she said before she could stop herself.

His eyes burned at her for a few seconds before he turned away to get another pillow.

Lark winced, but she’d told the truth.
Fatigue had weakened her mental barriers, and every time one of Jason’s muscles flexed as he wrestled the mattress into submission, she remembered what had happened earlier that day.

She sighed and shoved her hair back. “Is there a bathroom here?”

“Across the aisle.”

Lark found the primitive facilities and did what she could. When she got back, Jason was in bed already, fully clothed. She toed off her shoes, tucked her socks into them, and hung the gigantic sweatshirt on a nail. She hesitated a moment, but it was warm in there and she’d never be able to sleep if she was uncomfortable. She pulled off her T-shirt, removed her bra through the sleeves of her tank top, and unbuttoned her jeans before slipping under the sheet.

“You’re killing me,” Jason said a moment later, his voice low. He was lying on his left side, facing her. Lark had faced the same way, keeping her back to him and lying near the edge so they didn’t touch.

“It’s warm.” She looked over her shoulder and spoke softly, so Nils couldn’t hear. “Don’t you want to take off your shirt? Those long sleeves—”

“No.”

She shrugged. “Okay. Good night.”

“Lark.”

“Don’t.” She buried her face in her pillow, wishing it was his chest. He smelled incredible, and the heat radiating off him was very different from the stuffiness in the small room. Why couldn’t she be as immune to him as every other guy who’d crossed her path? It wasn’t just that he treated her like an equal, despite his charge to protect her. Or his body’s perfect composition. It wasn’t even simple chemistry, hormones driving their mutual attraction.

It was something deeper, something she couldn’t even define. Deeper than instinct or the occasional “click” of connection when you met someone you really liked. For the first time, she understood on more than an intellectual level how her father had felt about her mother, and why he wouldn’t have changed anything.

She should be glad Jason was resisting as hard as he was, but longing swelled until her fingers ached where she clutched the side of the bed, trying not to roll over to face him.

Jason’s hand settled on her hip. She froze, wishing he’d take it away, and equally afraid that he would. Desire crouched, braced, waited. He didn’t move. His hand was heavy, strong, belying the vulnerability she kept applying to him. She’d never known anyone so strong.

Don’t do it, you’ll be sorry, don’t do it
. The chant slowly faded and Lark rolled to her back, anticipation filling the humid air. She couldn’t see Jason in the darkness, but when her lips parted and she breathed him in, she didn’t need her eyes. For a moment, the need to trust him, to trust fate, overwhelmed the distance she’d always held on to.

Jason’s fingers stroked across her abdomen. “We can’t.” But even as he spoke he leaned toward her, finding her mouth without error. His mouth was hot, his lips supple, while his hand came up to cup her neck and face. Lark sensed he could hold himself in check for hours, years of discipline keeping him from taking this further. She wanted him to let go, like hours ago in his exercise room. The idea of making him lose control was a potent aphrodisiac. But she knew he wouldn’t.

She touched his neck, lightly, to show she wasn’t going to push. But instead of continuing the kiss, or easing out of it, Jason jerked away from her hand. Stunned, she automatically turned away, feeling stupid and angry because she didn’t know why.

Crap.
Jason blew out a breath, annoyed at his uncontrollable reaction. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine.” But she couldn’t hide that he’d hurt her.

“Let me explain.” He waited, but Lark remained tense and said nothing. “It’s the regeneration therapy.”

It took her a few seconds to respond. She twisted her torso to partly face him. “What do you mean, it’s the regeneration therapy?”

He rolled to his back. This would be easier if he wasn’t looking at her. “There are additional side effects to all the extra nerves the RT-24 has grown.” The bed bounced as Lark flipped completely over to face him. He felt her gaze and swallowed hard. “Light touch causes pain.”

Lark gave a soft gasp. “Like I just did on your neck.”

“Yes.”

“And all those other times I touched your arm or something and you hissed.”

He gritted his teeth. “We don’t need to run down a list, Lark.”

“I’m sorry.” He could hear her thinking, remembering his reaction, and probably wondering how he could protect her when he was so easily incapacitated. Or maybe she was reconsidering getting physical with a guy she could break with gentleness.

The first concern was easier to address. “No one’s going to try to incapacitate me by stroking my arm,” he said. She didn’t argue.

“What kind of pain is it?” Her hand, a vague shape in the darkness, hovered over him. He didn’t want her to be afraid. That was part of the problem. He caught her fingers and lowered her hand to his chest, pressing it there.

“It’s like I have millions of fibers embedded in my skin, and brushing them hurts. Like stingers. As you’ve seen, it makes this—” he waved his hand between them, “—pretty impossible.”

She made a dismissive noise in the back of her throat. “That’s why you wear such tight clothing.” Her hand moved across his pecs, pressing down, and he fought a groan.

“Yeah, that’s why. There’s more, though.” He had to tell her the rest before she took him too far. He halted the movement of her hand.

“Is it the same all over your body?” She held still and he relaxed.

“No. Areas that are already sensitive are okay. My hands—the backs are worse than the palms and fingers. My face is okay. Pretty much anything covered by clothing is a problem.”

“But if I’m not delicate, it doesn’t hurt?” She moved her hand back to his neck and pressed it flat.

“It doesn’t hurt. Not that way.” She moved it a little, still firm, and pleasure sank into him. “That feels good, actually.”

“Really?” She kneaded with her fingers, and this time he did groan.

“Really. That’s the other thing. The harder you press, the better it feels.” She dug harder, and he didn’t think she understood. He realized he’d rolled toward her again, and now his hands were wrapped around her upper arms. He wasn’t sure if he was trying to hold her away or pull her closer. “Sexually better, Lark.”

She froze. “Oh.” A heartbeat. Another. “Ohhh.” With a quick movement, she levered herself up and over him, twisting him to his back to straddle his hips. He gave no thought to stopping her, his brain already sluggish.