Silence that Sizzles (2 page)

“So are you going to make me guess why you’re here?” It was the longest question that Kyle had asked a woman in a long time. It wasn’t that he was a eunuch, far from it, but he wasn’t comfortable in most social situations. His agreement to run the club was almost a joke to Eric and Tony. He wondered if they had given him the job just to fuck with him and see if he’d fall flat on his face. Instead, he seemed to have been successful despite himself.

“How about we have a drink and get to know each other a little bit better before we dive into those details,” Kelly said with a sweet smile. She tipped the wine glass up to her lips which caused Kyle to focus intensely on them. He’d studied those lips multiple times over the course of the six months that he interacted with Kelly. He remembered thinking how beautiful she was, but she was just out of reach. Not just for him, but for every man in his squad. His fellow soldiers had made fools of themselves asking her out on dates time and time again. Kyle had never done so. He had known that she was way out of his league.

Now she was here standing in front of him, and he had no idea why. Kyle was suspicious on the best of days, and her reappearance in his life now sparked something inside of him. It was an anxiousness, a restlessness that he thought he’d been able to extinguish.

He had deep seeded feelings towards Kelly that he couldn’t explain. They scared the shit out of him. They were feelings that he knew had a name if he was willing to explore them further, but he wasn’t. He couldn’t do that because Kelly was human, and she didn’t belong in his world. She didn’t belong anywhere near a monster like him. It was because he cared about her that he felt the need to protect her from himself.

“What is it you want to know?” Kyle asked. He wished that he had another drink, and it was as if Sophie had once again read his mind. A glass of amber colored liquid appeared in front of him. If he was to guess, it was whiskey. It was Sophie’s lame attempt to slow him down, because he didn’t particularly care for whiskey. But he supposed he should appreciate it, since he needed to keep his wits about him right now. Every sense and every nerve in his body was on high alert. That’s what being around Kelly had always done to him.

“Just start at the beginning. Don’t you think?”

“I’m an open book. You had to have read everything there was to know about me in my file,” Kyle said as he took a long sip of the whiskey. As he expected, it burned going down, but not as much as it would have earlier. The scotch had warmed him up. He was starting to feel alive in a way that he hadn’t felt in forever. If he could feel like this after just a few moments in Kelly’s company, then what would he feel like after an hour? Or a day?

He had to slow down. He had to think. He couldn’t let his body and his emotions take control. Reining them in, he looked at her coolly. “Why don’t we skip the fake pleasantries, shall we? Get to the point. Otherwise, I’ve got work to do.”

Kelly’s eyes widened. It was as if he had struck her. Her wince caught him off guard, and once again he felt ashamed for making her feel that way. The only thing he ever wanted to do was bring Kelly the utmost joy and pleasure, and he hated the idea that he might be causing her pain.

“Maybe it’s because I know everything in your file that I am here. I need help, Kyle.”

“Help with what? You’re a big, fancy doctor working for a big, fancy pharmaceutical company. Surely you have whatever you need at your disposal.”

“I quit the company. A week ago.”

Kyle was surprised. He hadn’t been able to help himself. After he was discharged and landed in Copper City, he had looked into where Kelly was. He had been keeping tabs on her ever since. It had grown into something of an obsession over the years. He knew that he could never have her, but that didn’t mean that he had stopped thinking about her. She was ever there at the edge of his consciousness whenever he was awake or asleep.

“Aren’t you going to ask me why?”

Kyle shook his head and took another sip of his drink. He often thought that people talked too much in general. That was why he preferred to be quiet and to listen. It was amazing how much people would tell you if you just kept quiet. A grunt, a nod, an appropriately spaced agreement, and it was like people would spill their guts. He had learned a few social tricks watching Sophie interact with the club’s patrons. It was amazing to him to watch how it seemed as if people considered her a close confidant when they knew nothing about her. She was the epitome of a conversationalist who hardly ever spoke. It was a quality that he had admired and chosen to imitate. It was probably one of the reasons he was so successful in what he was doing now.

“Fine, then. If you want to know, I quit because I found out something was going on there that I just couldn’t live with.”

Kyle wondered if she was gullible or naïve. She had worked for the largest pharmaceutical company in the world; one that partnered with the US government on too many operations to name. Under the guise of keeping the soldiers healthy, he was more than certain that they had done other experiments on them. It was the oldest story in the book. Kyle was also not so gullible to believe that he hadn’t been part of any of that work.

“What, you couldn’t live with knowing that you were using experimental drugs on living test subjects without their knowledge? Did you grow a set of values since the last time I saw you?” His words were intended to hurt, and when he saw the tightening around her lips, he knew that he had hit his mark.

He needed her to get away from him. He knew that he could lose control if she didn’t. There was only so much that a man could take in such a short amount of time. He wasn’t any good for her. He didn’t know why she would have come to him anyway. There was nothing between them, and there never had been. Why she would trust him above all others was a question that he didn’t want to know the answer to. Because once he did, and if he committed himself in any way shape or form to her, he would never be able to let her go.

That was the simple truth of the matter. He knew something that Kelly did not, and it was something that he would take to his grave.

Kyle was convinced that Kelly Malone was his mate, and that was why she needed to leave.

Kelly was up out of her seat and across the dance floor headed in the direction of the front door before she even knew what had happened. She’d known it was a gamble coming to Kyle for help. But there had always been something about him that inspired a level of trust that went far beyond the confines of their existing relationship; bare-bones as it had been.

She had seen him twice a week for routine checkups while she had been on assignment covering his squad in Afghanistan. It had been an assignment that she had welcomed when she received it, and then more than happy to wash her hands of when she came back. All parts of it, of course, except for the strange, nagging sensation in her gut that she felt whenever she was around Kyle Frost.

Two weeks ago, everything in her life had been upended so suddenly. She still wondered if she had made the right decision.

She’d been working late one night alone in the lab. She had to check something on her assistant’s computer and saw a strange file on the desktop with a project name she didn’t recognize. She had thought that he was going behind her back for a job interview with another company. Miffed, she’d clicked on it to see what he had been up to. Instead, what she’d found was so much worse.

The project wasn’t work for another company. It was for Oak Tree Pharmaceutical, her company. But the work wasn’t anything that she had authorized. As she dug deeper into the files, she realized why. It was related to something her boss had mentioned to her years ago, and she had refused to even consider it. She thought that was the end of it, but it appeared that they had found someone else willing to do the research behind her back.

Kelly wasn’t gullible. She had known that there were darker parts of the research that was done by many of the pharmaceutical companies that Oak Tree competed with, and there was also a burning desire to be the first to market with new drugs and treatments. But the worst part of all of it was that they had taken work she had done years ago and completely warped it into something unspeakable. Based on what she saw in the files, they were ready to start human trials.

It had been an early stage vaccine that she had developed years ago in her graduate program. It was the same work that had attracted the attention of Oak Tree to her to begin with, and now it was going to be used in a way that she had never intended. It had been warped, turned completely upside down, and mutilated, and she felt sick every time she thought about it. Once she had found out about the secret project, she had been unable to look away. She had read all of it, somehow kept her calm as she printed out hard copies of the more pertinent files, made a copy of everything on a flash drive, and then she ran.

She thought it would be easy to quit. She thought that she could simply walk away. But cutting ties with Oak Tree hadn’t been as easy as she thought. She had stumbled into something she wasn’t supposed to know about, and she suspected they knew it as well.

Two days after her abrupt departure, the calls had started. Calls where there was no one on the other end of the line. Then there had been the random, anonymous emails. Emails that indicated if she knew something and told anyone about it, she’d regret it. Then a few days ago she looked out the front window of her house and saw two shadows under the street light across the street. She was in danger; she was sure of it.

It was stupidly irrational to come to Kyle; she knew that. She hadn’t seen him in over four years. But as she weighed her options, the only thing she could think about was finding someone who could help her feel safe again. Kyle Frost had always made her feel safe, even in the middle of a war zone.

She thought back to that night in the foxhole. There had been an unexpected drone strike on their camp. She had been on her way to her tent when it had all happened. Kyle had found her crouching next to her tent not knowing what to do. He had taken her into his arms and carried her to safety. They had lain in the foxhole in the ground together, their bodies touching in all of the most intimate places for the better part of four hours. She found that she hadn’t minded one bit. They didn’t speak during the whole ordeal, but the only thing she remembered was that she had felt safe. Protected. Comforted. Perhaps even…loved?

That was craziness talking. She didn’t even know what to do with something like that. People didn’t just go around falling in love at first sight. Of course, she was human, and Kyle was not. She knew all about the lore of shifter mates. She tried to examine it rationally, but still it made her feel a little jealous. She knew that at some point in time Kyle would meet someone that he could not live without. To have that kind of intensity of emotion was stunning to her. It brought out the researcher side of her, and it was something that she had intended to follow up on in her future work. Her work after she left Oak Tree, but it turned out the joke was on her. Her employment contract was apparently forever. They weren’t going to cut her loose. Ever.

She had come to Kyle because, for some fleeting reason, she had thought that there was something between them that meant that he would help her. She knew that Kyle had problems. She had seen his file. He was right about that. 

He had been treated for various emotional disorders the better part of his adult life. And even after he left the Army, that didn’t mean that they had lost track of him. Once a soldier was in a program with Oak Tree, they were part of the program forever. That should have been a cue to Kelly of her own potential fate. There continued to be surveillance reports and pictures that had crossed her desk about Kyle detailing what he’d been up to since he left the Army two years ago.

Dishonorable discharge. She knew that sentence had to have cut him deep. No matter what his issues, Kyle was a proud man. He had a strong rooted sense of morals and ethics that she had rarely seen in all of the men that she had worked with over her career. It was another reason that she felt like she could trust him. In the end, though, it didn’t work because he couldn’t trust her. Not that she could blame him.

She was out the front entrance and onto the street. She could feel the tears starting to well in her eyes as she scanned the cars in front of her.

She thought she was looking for a taxi, but she wasn’t sure. She didn’t have anywhere to go other than back to her hotel, but she didn’t want to because she felt exposed there. She didn’t have anywhere where she felt safe. She cursed herself for getting dressed up in the silly outfit trying to look like one of the girls who would fit in at Urban Dwellers. She thought that she might be able to catch Kyle’s attention like this, in a way that they had never expressed their relationship before. It had been silly. But then so many things that Kelly found she had been doing in her life were silly or wrong. She started to make her way through the crowded sidewalk when suddenly she felt someone grab her arm and whirl her around. For a moment, she thought that Oak Tree had finally sent someone to take care of her. Then she looked up into Kyle’s steely gray-blue eyes.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

“Anywhere but here,” Kelly said fiercely. She had basically begged him to help her, and he had treated her like shit. Kelly Malone was a lot of things, but she wasn’t a weakling. If Kyle wasn’t going to help her, she’d figure it out by herself. She could take care of herself; she had done it for years.

Kyle’s face softened as he noticed her flinch at the intensity of his stare. “You didn’t finish your drink.”

Kelly felt her mouth fall open. He had insulted her, and now he was pissed that she hadn’t finished her free drink? “I’m not like those girls in there. I know where I’m not welcome.”

“I think we got off on the wrong foot,” Kyle said with a sigh. “Why don’t you come back inside and tell me what’s going on?”

Kelly stared up into his eyes and wondered if he ever thought about that night in the foxhole the way that she did. They were memories that helped her get to sleep some nights. Other nights, just thinking about it was like her torment. Her skin would tingle with sensations, and there was no way to reach her release.

“I don’t want to be a bother.” Those words these were the truth. She didn’t want to be a bother to anyone, much less to Kyle.

“People come here for help all the time. Maybe I’d forgotten that for a moment. Most of the time they’re shifters, but we don’t turn anyone away who’s in need.”

That was something that Kelly did know. It had been in the surveillance reports as well. She thought that Kyle and his business partners thought they might be above scrutiny at this point. They all seemed to be rich and well-to-do, and they ran the entire clan of shifters that lived in Copper City. Although they publicly dismissed the idea that the Urban Dwellers were a clan.

Clans were the way that the shifter communities were organized. All of the members of the clan obeyed the rule of the clan’s alpha. And there was always an alpha. That was the strange thing about the Urban Dwellers. There had been much media speculation about which one of the three was the alpha in the group. None of them claimed it, though. That was also unusual. Whenever there was an alpha present, not unlike the most famous alpha, the Greyelf alpha Lukas Kasper, they were always the first one to tell you they were the alpha.

Kelly was probably one of the few humans who knew more about shifters, shifter politics, and shifter behavior than almost anyone else in the world. It had been the main focus of her department’s research division at Oak Tree. That was with the exception of Kyle’s business partner, Anthony Atwood. But Anthony was a shifter, so he knew things by his very nature that Kelly had to uncover on her own. To Kelly, that almost didn’t count.

“You’ll really hear me out?” There was a part of her that said that she should still leave. Coming to Kyle had been an idea that opened up a whole can of worms that she wasn’t really sure if she wanted to deal with, and yet she couldn’t stay away.

There was a faint smile that crossed Kyle’s lips. “I’ll do more than that if you let me.”

The words hung in the air between them, and Kelly felt her heart speed up. What was he offering? What was she willing to accept? She was scared shitless of the answer to both of those questions. He offered his arm to her, and she hooked hers through it without hesitation. She was into Kyle, hook line and sinker, and it seemed almost silly to deny it.

Once back inside, Kyle surprised Kelly by leading her towards the back of the club and up a small flight of stairs. They arrived at a door at the top of the stairs, and he opened it and allowed her to walk through first. She found herself in a small office. It was neat and tidy, and there was a desk, a small couch, and a couple of chairs arranged in a more casual sitting area. She looked at Kyle with a raised eyebrow.

“I figured this was a better place to talk than the bar.” He walked to a small cabinet on the other side of the room and popped it open. He looked back at her over his shoulder with a grin. “But that’s not to say we can’t still have a drink.”

Kelly smiled back at him. He pulled a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc out of the cabinet and showed it to her. Kelly could afford nicer wine on her salary, but she usually chose to squirrel it away for other things. She recognized the label on the bottle and the vintage. The bottle had to have cost at least three hundred dollars.

“Are you sure you want to drink that?”

“Anything for an old friend.” Kyle didn’t say anything else as he popped open the wine and poured her a glass. He handed the glass to her, and she took it demurely from him. She felt silly now standing in front of him dressed the way that she was. When she was wearing her white lab coat, she always felt completely in control. But when she was in street clothes, having to deal with other people in regular social interactions, she always felt like she failed miserably. She blamed it on her parents. She shook herself of those thoughts. She didn’t want to think about her parents. Their loss was still too recent for her.

“Sit down and take a load off,” Kyle said. “I’m not going to judge what you tell me. I won’t say anything. Why don’t you just tell me why you’re here?”

Kelly finally felt like she was getting somewhere. She took a deep breath and dove in. She found that she couldn’t stop when she started. She told Kyle all about staying late at the lab that particular night. She told him about the file that she had found on her assistant’s computer. She told him just enough of what she’d seen inside of it that she heard his growl. She shivered, although she wasn’t afraid he would do anything to her. She understood though that he was upset by what she had said.

“Did you make copies of anything?”

Kelly nodded. “I printed out a few things and copied the rest on a flash drive. Then I ran. I thought I could quit. I thought it would all go away. But then I found out that my contract is legally binding for as long as the company chooses to employ me, not the other way around. It was fine print I completely missed. Through the formal channels, they’ve made it very clear that I have one of two options. I either come back to work and keep my mouth shut about what I’ve seen, or they will make sure I never work again. Through the informal channels, the threats are worse. I think they’ll kill me.”

She couldn’t believe she’d said the words out loud, but she knew they were the truth. She was involved up to her eyeballs with a company that had ties to the government. After what she had seen, there was no way that they were going to let her talk to anyone about it.

“Where are you staying?”

The question surprised Kelly, but she guessed she should’ve known better. She didn’t live in Copper City. It was the last place on earth that she should’ve come to. Oak City’s headquarters were in the heart of downtown. If they wanted to find her, they could do so easily.