Going Under (22 page)

Shock made his skin cold and then a fire of outrage began to build in his belly. “They
want to put us in camps?”

“They want to chip us with GPS trackers. They want to forcibly sterilize all of us
so we can’t procreate and yes, they want to put us in camps. Reservations. Whatever
you want to call it. Our property would be taken by the government and put into accounts
for us to use while
being hosted.
”

“This is a fucking outrage, Molly.”

“No kidding. So that was the big Sunday morning politics show I was just on the phone
with. I’ll need to meet with the Others when I get to town. The studio will be the
day after. I’m on the panel now. Apparently Carlo Powers and Senator Hayes were already
scheduled. Tosh told me he was on it too, so at least there’s that. His office sent
me the bill and then called about the show. I guess he made a fuss that I wasn’t invited.”
She riffled through other things on her desk as he tried not to frown.

Toshio Sato was like a damned bad penny. He kept turning up. Usefully, though Gage
wouldn’t admit it out loud.

“I’m sure Rita already told you this, but we’re set to fly out at six. Are you nearly
done here? It’s after eight and I know you haven’t eaten.”

Her annoyance faded as she gave him her best Molly smile. “You’re sweet.”

“Don’t tell anyone. They all think I eat nails for breakfast.”

“Give me ten minutes. I need to gather up some supporting documentation to take with
me.”

He stood. “I’ll be back in ten minutes and you’ll be coming with me.”

“I love it when you’re forceful.”

“I know you do.” He waved over his shoulder as he left the room.

“Make sure she rests.”

He paused at Rita’s desk. “Says you. Who’s here at eight at night.”

“I’m old. I don’t need as much sleep. Also, I’m not being pummeled on every front
twenty-four hours a day like she is. I’m counting on you to not only protect her,
but to take care of her. I know you’re sweet on that girl. She needs it. Needs something
to think about other than this job.”

“How’d you know?”

“The way you look at each other. The way you take care of her. The way she looks for
you in a room when she enters it. The way you touch her. I’m old, I’m not dumb or
blind.”

He smiled, bending to kiss her cheek. “You totally aren’t. Why don’t you go home too?
If you leave, she’ll find it easier when I come back in eight minutes.”

“I don’t leave until she does. It’s our deal.” Rita patted her hair and sat straighter.

“All right. I’ll be back in eight minutes and you’re both leaving. I’ll drop you home
too.”

He moved out of there quickly before she could argue, heading to his office. He wanted
to leave notes for Lark. Turns out he didn’t have to as she was still working.

“Hey, I figured you’d be out on patrol or home.”

“Full crew is out on patrol tonight. I promised Simon I’d be home before nine for
a change.”

He told her about the legislation and about how Molly had browbeaten the journalist
on the phone about not being on the panel.

Lark shoved both hands through her hair, sending it all over the place. “You’ve got
to be joking. These people won’t be satisfied until we’re all dead.”

“I agree.”

“Her options are more limited each day.” Lark meant Molly.

“Yeah.” He hated that it was true. Knew she wanted peace. Hell, even he wanted peace.
But that option was less and less certain as the days passed.

“She’s no dummy. Certainly not weak. She’ll do what she needs to. Even if she wishes
she didn’t have to.” Lark sighed.

“I think so, yes. I’ve got to run. I’m giving my aunt a ride home before I get Molly
back to the hotel. I’ll keep you updated.”

“Be careful, Gage. Listen to your gut.”

He’d shared with her the way his powers had grown in recent months. His ability to
go into a crowd and sense a real threat seemed to grow each day. The problem was in
crowd situations it was harder to tell the direction of the threat. Especially if
more than one person truly wanted to harm them.

“Count on it.”

Lark held his gaze. “I do.”

Chapter 23

SHE
settled in with her note cards and Gage put a glass of wine on the table where she
could reach it.

“Thank you. For everything.”

He paused. “I like taking care of you. You reward me so nicely.”

It was more than the sex. She knew that to her toes. He could skirt around it all
he wanted, but he protected her in a way that was far different than how he protected
Meriel. He touched her like she was special.

“Mmm-hmm. You going to stay over?” She asked this absently, knowing his answer, while
she began to put together a map for all the things she needed to do the following
several days.

“Easiest that way.”

“It’s a really far trip from your room next door, yeah.”

He snorted a laugh. “I gave that room up a few days ago.”

She looked up from her work. “You did?”

“I sleep here every night and when I’m not here, we’re at my place. Or traveling.
Waste of resources.” He blushed as he shrugged his shoulders.

“Oh. Resource conservation.” She nodded her head like he wasn’t a dumbass and looked
back at her cards.

“I like being with you.”

Well, that was far nicer than resource conservation, she had to admit. She locked
gazes with him. “See? That wasn’t even hard. Also, I like being with you too.”

“I should pack.” He hurried from the room as she snorted and went back to her work.

This thing they had brought her no small measure of comfort. Of stability. He was
something so positive in a life filled with negativity. Despite their bickering, his
heart was good. His convictions were strong. He talked a good game because he was
grumpy, but he wanted peace if they could have it.

Their little tiffs kept her on her toes, and she needed that. Because the humans she
had to deal with didn’t.

This time in D.C. was pivotal. She could feel it to her toes. Or rather, in her gut.

He wandered back in the room and settled on the couch with a book.

She kept writing, putting her thoughts down, organizing them. The more she did, the
more her color-coded ink filled the paper and the greater the number of stacks, the
better she felt.

Two hours later she stood to stretch and caught him watching her, wearing his sex
look. It shot straight to her lady bits and she waggled her brows at him. “I was planning
on a shower.”

She padded from the room, smiling to herself when she heard him get up to follow.

Gage had become more than a guy she had sex with. She craved this time with him. When
it was just the two of them, naked or not, but certainly naked was the most fun. She
could let down all her barriers and just be Molly.

She pulled off her clothes, putting them in her laundry basket before going into the
bathroom where he was already naked and had turned the shower on. A shiver went through
her at the sight.

Gage was beautiful. Masculine. Hard and toned. Naked he was even more impressive than
when he had weapons strapped all over him. He was a weapon. A physical manifestation
of the most badass gun, knife, whatever.

And when he looked at her, all that hardness, all that furious defense of everything
she held dear softened.

Well, not
everything.
Some parts of him got harder.

“That smile scares me, beautiful.” He moved to her, pulling her close so they were
skin to skin. She shivered, sighing into his embrace, letting the heat of him settle
into her bones.

“Nothing scares you.” She kissed his shoulder.

“Lots of things scare me.”

The tone he used caught her attention as she let him dance her into the shower. She
groaned as the water hit her, warming the chill.

She shampooed and conditioned her hair first and then did his, loving the feel of
his scalp against her palms.

“Like what?” she asked. “What scares you, Gage?”

He poured soap in his palm and rubbed his hands together as she watched, captivated
by the sensuality of the slow, purposeful movement. Then those hands found her skin
and she closed her eyes, opening her senses to the way he made her feel.

She was aware part of his motive for these awesome sex moves was to take her mind
off his earlier comment and to keep from answering her question. Sometimes they did
this. This careful dance of opening up and being vulnerable to the other.

It helped when there was sex. When they were naked, hands on the other, lips on the
other, it was easier to unleash the words they kept so tightly.

His soap-slicked fingers tugged on her nipples until she made needy sounds. When she
opened her eyes she found his gaze on her face.

His hair, wet and slicked back, exposed the masculine beauty of his face. Of those
movie-star cheekbones and the full, luscious lips.

“So beautiful.” He leaned in to kiss her. A tease of contact, pulling away and going
back to soaping her body up.

“Me? Ha. You look like a television commercial for exercise equipment.”

He grinned and she found herself backed to the tile, his body pressed to hers. He
slid his arms around her, big hands on her ass, cupping, tipping her hips just exactly
how he wanted.

He made her swoon sometimes. The way he just took what he wanted. Knowing it was what
she wanted too. She was no virgin. There’d been others who’d rung her bell in the
sex department.

But this was something else. More. So much more that every time he touched her she
ached. Needed. Craved. She thought about sex with him pretty much all day long. Which
made interminable meetings more amusing, certainly.

His fingers brushed against the heart of her, sliding through her pussy, sending ripples
of sensation through her body until all she could manage was a stuttered breath.

“So hot and wet. I think about this.” He punctuated that with a quick, relentless
flick against her clit until she gasped a
please.
“Every time I smell you. Did you know your perfume hangs in the air like a siren
song? Your magick and your skin—powerful combination. I walk down a hall and I know
you’ve been there. My whole body gets hard and all I can think of is being in you.
Of the way it feels when I slide inside and you hug me so tight.”

She leaned back against the cool porcelain but it didn’t help. His words dazzled her,
rendered her into a pool of need. When the head of him brushed against her she didn’t
jump. She arched to get closer, going to her tiptoes to take him, her fingers digging
into the steel of his biceps, urging him on, in.

“Impatient.”

She nodded and tried not to snarl when he pulled back a little.

He let go of her butt, sliding his hands around her body, testing the weight of her
breasts in his palms. “All mine.”

Goddess, yes.

Then his hands slid down, fingertips teasing her belly button, a light touch over
the seam where thigh met body that sent a shiver of anticipation through her. He spread
her open as her hips jutted forward to get more.

“You’re soapy still. I should rinse you off.”

He unhooked the showerhead and rinsed her, slowly, methodically and she had to bite
her lip to keep from begging him to get on with it.

“What I think I love most about you is the way you’re so controlled out there in the
world. No matter how pissed off or annoyed you are, you never let anyone get under
your skin. Your responses are so sharp and cold sometimes, slicing right through the
ego of your enemies. You’re calm and collected. But here with me? When the door is
locked? You’re not so controlled at all. You know what you like and you’re fearless
about demanding it.”

Helpless against his appeal, she took in the way he watched her, watched the soap
slide down her thighs.

“That Molly is my secret. All that fire and passion just beneath the skin. Mmmm.”
He dipped his head to lick over her shoulder and then spread her open again, this
time aiming the showerhead at her clit.

She sucked in a breath as the sensation began to build. Her muscles burned as she
worked to keep standing as the relentless brush of the water over her clit dragged
her up and up, closer and closer to climax as he watched.

His gaze was nearly as physical as the water, as the fingers holding her open. And
when she broke, it was on a breath and a gasp, his name in her head.

And then he was pressing into her body, pulling her thigh up over his hip, even as
her inner walls continued to flutter.

The way she peeled back, layer after layer, each more complex than the last made her
irresistible to him. He wasn’t sure when or how it had happened, but what he was most
scared of was losing this woman whose body took his so eagerly. This woman who had
a sense of humor most people rarely saw. This fierce, powerful advocate for her people
with a great big heart.

He could not afford to feel for her this way but that didn’t stop it from happening
anyway.

He thrust, over and over as she wrapped an arm around his neck, her calf wrapped at
his ass, pulling him closer, holding him in place as he loved her.

He lost all his patience when she was involved. He wanted to gorge himself of her
before he even managed to get her alone to touch her. And this way, just the two of
them? He pressed deeper and deeper as their magick rose and mingled on the steam.

When he came, he knew he’d want her again within minutes.

* * *

HE
lay in bed as she brushed her hair out. His muscles were pleasantly loose; his skin
smelled of her. He smiled, utterly satisfied.

They’d gone to sleep an hour or so after their shower sex and he hadn’t woken up a
single time. It tended to be like that if they made love before they went to bed.

“You’re better than warm milk,” he murmured as she pulled a pair of underpants on.

She laughed. “Um. Thank you?”

“It’s a compliment. I was just thinking about how well I sleep when we fuck right
before.”

“Ah. Well, I agree. Not that I’m akin to warm milk. But it does tend to unknot my
muscles. You’re good with magick and handguns and sexing me into unconsciousness.
While I love Faine, he’s not nearly as fun as you are as a guard.”

He rolled from bed, pausing to kiss her on his way to the bathroom. “Good to know
my services are so unique.”

He brushed his teeth and washed his face, listening to her as she got dressed and
began to prepare to leave. Shortly, the scent of coffee began to waft through the
air.

She looked crisp and feminine all at once as she smiled up at him. “I figured I’d
have to make coffee to wake you up.”

“I smelled your perfume. That’s what woke me first.” Well, in total truth, he woke
when she got out of bed. It was as if his system came to full alert when she wasn’t
next to him.

He poured them both a mug and got the milk out.

“Do you want a bagel? There’s fruit and cheese here too. I won’t ask if you want hummus.
There’s cream cheese in the fridge.”

“Yes to a bagel.”

He settled in across from her. “I like those earrings.” Her hair was pulled back,
as she so frequently wore it. The earrings he knew had been a gift from Lark. Deep
blue beads dangled below a pearl. Nothing showy, but feminine like their wearer.

“Thank you.” She chewed on her lip and he knew she wanted to say something but was
trying to figure out how to put it. He wasn’t sure if he should brace himself or tell
her to just say it.

In the end he waited for it, trusting that she’d say it when she was ready to.

“I feel really dumb for not knowing this. But, does your magick get stronger as you
age? Or if you train more?”

“Don’t feel stupid about not knowing. To answer your question, yes, in part. You don’t
have much magick you can use when you’re a child. It grows as does your awareness
of it, once you hit puberty. You have however much power you have. But like many skills,
you can harness your power more and use it more effectively if you train at it.”

“I . . . I think my magick has gotten a great deal more powerful since the Magister.”

He paused because he’d had the same thought. Many Others had related the same thing
over the last weeks.

“It’s more than being trained and knowing new spells. I feel like”—she sighed, looking
for the right words, he knew—“yes, I can do more things, but my ability is stronger.
At first I thought it was being taught how to use my othersight. I had all this stuff
but really didn’t know how to use it. But even the stuff I did before seems to work
better. My signal is boosted, I guess. Or that’s how it feels. When I’m addressing
a crowd I’ve always had the ability to adjust my message, to know in my gut how to
do it and make myself heard. But now? Now it feels like I’m a conductor. I can see
how they’re all feeling, or I know it.” She shook her head and ate for a few minutes.

“The problem with magick is that the terms to describe it all seem so imprecise.”

He laughed then. “I know how that bothers you.”

She sent him raised brows, underlined by a haughty sniff. “Nothing wrong with liking
precision. When I reach down to use my magick, the well of my power seems deeper.”

“Many of us are feeling the same thing. Meriel says her magick has grown by an order
of magnitude.”

“Nina Warden told me she can shift back and forth with far more ease and less pain
than before. I heard a rumor that the vampires need to take less blood now.”

Wow. Not just witches then. “Did you tell Meriel this? Or Lark?”

“I’m telling you.”

“This . . . well, it’s interesting. I need to consult with Meriel. Do you mind if
I share this with her?”

Molly shrugged. “Of course not.”

He knew it was early. But he also knew Meriel rose at five anyway so he called.

“Meriel Owen.”

“Meriel, it’s Gage. I’ve got Molly here with me and you’re on speaker. I need to talk
to you about something Molly just told me.”

“Well, that got my attention.” In the background Meriel said Dominic’s name. “Go on.”