The Storm That Is Sterling (21 page)

The energy he’d felt spiking along her nerve endings faded instantly. Sterling let out a sigh of relief, and it was all he could do not to pull her into his arms. Had he ever felt such protectiveness for a woman? For anyone? Her grip on his hand tightened, her eyes meeting his, awareness between them.

There was something as intimate as sex in that connection they’d shared. Something beyond physical contact, a sense of knowing each other on a level no other person could. It was remarkable. On some level he knew her fears, her joys, her needs. And, he thought, with a hard swallow, she knew his. She knew things he’d never shared with anyone.

“Can you feel your shield in place, Becca?” Caleb asked. “Protecting your mind?”

“Yes,” she said, and obviously struggled to pull her gaze from Sterling to Caleb. “I feel it.”

“Keep it in place,” he said. “Practice releasing that shield and then pulling it back into place. Use Sterling as that anchor if you need to, especially when you go to sleep. You have to feel that shield before you allow yourself to rest.”

Sleep. Bed. Him with Becca. Sterling mentally shook away that image. “If she lets down the shield, then can’t her attacker come back after her again?”

“I can’t be certain, but I don’t think so,” Caleb said, releasing their arms and leaning back on one foot, settling his arm on his knee. “Emotions create a type of energy wired to the brain. That energy leaves a residue that lasts for a short period of time. Once it’s gone, it’s gone. He’d need another strand of her energy to attach to. And the good news here is that Becca, in essence, has the same ability to shield herself as a full GTECH, minus the help of a Lifebond.” His gaze touched Sterling’s. “Not even a Tracker could find her should she ever be marked.” Sterling inhaled. Caleb was telling him that he could be intimate with Becca without consequence.

“Is this because I’m using ICE?” Becca asked.

“I don’t think so,” Caleb replied. “After the connection we shared, my feeling is that this has to do with a natural ability you possessed without awareness before using the ICE. Or maybe before combining the cancer treatments and the ICE. I don’t think your abilities can be recreated in other people without the same dormant skills.” He shrugged. “The whys, whens, hows, and mights—those are questions for you scientists.”

“This is all so… surreal,” she murmured, tilting her head to study Caleb. “You look so much like Adam, but yet, you are nothing like him.”

“I consider that a compliment,” he said in what was meant to be a nonchalant tone, but failed. Sterling knew Caleb’s secret fear of becoming like Adam one day.

“You don’t communicate with wolves?”

Caleb shook his head. “No. That is my brother’s ability.” His tone darkened. “Who was he, Becca? That boy who attacked your mind?”

“Dorian,” she whispered, then firmed her voice. “It was Dorian. I hate even saying his name. He’s Adam’s son.”

Sterling’s brows shot up. “Come again? Adam’s son is six months old. How would he attack your mind?”

Grimly Becca explained, “Dorian is only six months old, but he’s aging at the rate of two years per month. He’s the DNA source for ICE. And let me tell you, he is the epitome of evil, beyond Adam, and he’s getting stronger and more dangerous every day.”

“Holy mother of Jesus,” Sterling murmured, his eyes meeting Caleb’s troubled stare.

“You can say that again,” Caleb agreed. “I felt that boy’s energy. If he’s this powerful at six months old, what will he be at a year? Or five?”

“He’s pure evil,” Becca repeated. “I can’t stress that enough. He’ll kill just to watch someone die, because it entertains him. I saw him in action. And that’s the kind of evil these Clanners are ingesting daily.” Her lips thinned as her face paled. “That I’m ingesting every day.”

***

The parking garage was a scurry of activity as police tried to get to the car that had been reported as stolen. Zodius soldiers held them at bay.

Meanwhile, in the exact spot that stolen vehicle had once been, the spot where Rebecca Burns had experienced the pain Dorian was now using to connect and hopefully kill her, Adam watched as Dorian’s eyes rolled from the back of his head and came into focus. “I have met my uncle, Father,” Dorian said. “You were right. He is very powerful. He has defeated me. He has saved the woman’s life.”

Adam inhaled a bittersweet breath. Caleb’s abilities, his strengths, however cumbersome at present, would be immensely useful when Caleb assumed his role as a leader by his side.

“He does not wish to join us, Father,” Dorian said. “But I know that you wish him to. He is concerned for the humans. Why not kill some of them? He will join us to save them.”

“Because killing humans scares the other humans,” Adam said. “Until we control enough of them, we must cater to their many sensitivities. We do not want to scare people away from using ICE before its use becomes a national epidemic of sorts. Which will be soon.” He was already hard at work planning expanded distribution.

Adam redirected to matters most urgent. “Do you know where the woman is, Dorian?”

“I know only what I saw in her mind,” Dorian said. “She is still in the city—not far, I think. In a lab with the one they call Sterling. He was in her mind, too. Sterling is fond of the woman. She could be used against him if need be.”

Adam smiled at the way Dorian instinctively found weakness and turned it into a strategy. He snapped his fingers at Tad who stood nearby. “Find Sterling. Follow him. He will lead you to Rebecca Burns.”

She’d introduced Caleb to Dorian, the source of ICE. That screwed up his plans to use Dorian as a secret weapon when he’d reached his prime. Adam balled his fists at his side. He should have killed that bitch himself when he had the chance.

Adam cut Dorian a look. “Give the humans something to think about besides us.”

Dorian’s eyes filled with a mixture of menace and excitement. “Thank you, Father,” he said. “I so enjoy playing with the humans.”

A moment later, flames shot from a nearby car, then another. And another. Adam laughed as voices lifted in the air, people scrambling to safety.

Adam and his entourage faded into the strands of wind whistling through the screams.

Becca’s blood work was almost normal, as in barely a trace of anything pointing to cancer. It was a miracle, but Becca didn’t celebrate. Kelly and Sterling seemed to understand she needed to set herself aside, including the threat Dorian represented, and focus on the big picture.

Six hours later, Becca punched a computer button to end a session with Kelly and turned away from the lab table to run smack into Sterling.

His hands settled quickly to her arms, steadying her. Heat curled in her stomach, and she had the most exasperating desire to push to her toes and run her fingers through his spiky blond hair.

“You’re hovering again,” she reprimanded.

“I was bringing your dose of ICE,” he said and then grinned. “But yeah, hovering too.”

“My mental shield is up,” she said. “I can feel it. I’m okay. I swear. You don’t have to stand over me and wait for Dorian to attack.”

“I’d rather be safe than sorry,” he said. “I’m staying close by your side. So just deal with it.” His hands slid away from her arms, leaving her cold and eager to have him touch her again. He held out the vial of ICE. “I don’t want you going into withdrawal.”

Reluctantly, she reached for it, but closed her hand around his instead, as she suddenly remembered something she’d learned while in his head. “This isn’t about me surviving this addiction,” she said, needing him to know that for some reason. “I know you’re worried about that, maybe even worried that I will have second thoughts about destroying ICE. But I wouldn’t have told you about Dorian if that were the case. I know you might think I’ll make decisions simply to keep myself alive, or maybe others around you will, but I won’t. This is bigger than me.”

He reached up and brushed hair from her eyes, gently, protectively. “Then I guess
I’ll
have to keep you alive.”

She wanted to melt into him at that moment, wanted to believe he could protect her, save her. But he couldn’t. Why pretend otherwise? She slipped the vial of ICE from his hand and turned away from him. Ashamed by such an addiction, she didn’t want him to see her take it.

Becca downed the ICE and set the vial on the lab table, the freezing sensation sending her hand to her throat. Suddenly, Sterling’s hands were on her shoulders, and he was turning her toward him. Before she knew his intention, his fingers laced through her hair, and he was kissing her, his mouth hot, demanding. His body—strong, warm—pressed close to her.

With only a moment of hesitation, Becca leaned into him, wrapped her arms around his back, moaned as his tongue slid along hers, caressed and teased, hungry. He tasted like apple pie, and if she hadn’t been so hot, she might have laughed at the fact that he’d been eating apple pie.

But she was hot, and for the first time since meeting Sterling, maybe for the first time ever, she kissed him—kissed a man—with complete, utter abandon. Kissed him like there might not be a tomorrow, like a woman who knew what she wanted, and what she wanted was him.

Long seconds later, Sterling tore his mouth from hers, staring down at her with heavy-lidded bedroom eyes that made her want to kiss him all over again. “I thought you had reasons not to touch me,” she challenged, hardly recognizing the gravelly, desire-laden words as her own.

“I’ve never done real well at doing what I’m supposed to do,” he said, his thumb caressing her cheek, the sensation somehow making her breasts heavy, her nipples tight and achy. Becca had never felt so ready to lose herself in a man. But then, she’d never been in a position where she had nothing to lose but herself. It was liberating in ways she was ready to embrace.

She drew a breath and willed away the flutters in her stomach, nerves that came from years of suppressing her desires. “I’ve always done exactly what’s expected of me,” she confessed. “I don’t want to this time. I don’t want you to either.”

He lowered his head, his breath warm as it caressed her skin. The promise of his kiss brought her to her toes when suddenly he drew back. “Once we do this,” he said, a deep, whiskey-rich quality to his voice, “we can’t undo it.”

He’d said something similar at her house, when he was about to tell her about the GTECHs. She didn’t shy away then, and she wasn’t going to now. And apparently neither was he, because despite his warning, he didn’t move away, didn’t put distance between them, and she could feel the thick ridge of his erection. Courage formed with those realizations. Becca flattened her hand on his chest, splayed her fingers, absorbed the feel of muscle flexing beneath her palm. She wanted to touch him, to feel him close, to forget everything else for just a little while.

“I don’t want to die never having known you, Sterling.”

Torment sliced through his expression. “Becca—”

She pressed her fingertips to his lips. “Don’t,” she said, easing her fingers away, letting them slide over his jaw. “Every day of our lives could be the last for every one of us. I’m simply living with that in mind. I regret not doing so my entire life.” She’d regretted a lot since finding out she had cancer, and regret was something she could do without. “I want you, Sterling.”

He stared down at her, and she’d never been looked at quite like that, with so much simmering heat. He really did look like he wanted to gobble her up as he’d once suggested, and thankfully, he apparently decided he would. He kissed her, more than kissed her. It was a claiming, a taking. A possessing. His lips pressed to hers, first soft then firm, his tongue pressing past her teeth, warm with demand, hungry… devouring her. And she wanted to be devoured, wanted to devour him right back. Wanted to do every wanton, sensual deed she’d ever dared to consider, ever dared to wonder about, and always allowed inhibitions to destroy.

Becca went to her toes, reaching for him, silently begging for more as she molded her body to his. Tugging his T-shirt free of his pants, she pressed her hands beneath. Warm skin greeted her, and she moaned into his mouth. She craved more of that skin next to her.

She shoved the shirt upward. “Take it off,” she panted into his mouth.

Instead, she found herself lifted onto the lab table, her legs spread wide, Sterling between them. And still he kissed her, softly, deeply, then wildly, trailing his lips over her jaw, near her ear, down her neck. He shoved aside her lab coat, strong hands skimming her rib cage and then caressing the curves of her breasts.

Feeling bold in her need, Becca’s hands were touching him anywhere she could, everywhere she could reach. When she finally managed to press her palm over the front of his crotch and trace the ridge of his erection, he moaned and pulled back.

“Are you sure about this?” he asked, his voice husky with desire. And that desire only served to make Becca hotter.

She caressed the hard length of him and found herself smiling. “Are you sure about this?”

He half-growled, half-moaned and kissed her again, long strokes of his tongue promising this was going to be the best sex of her life, and she was ready.

“Not here,” he whispered against her lips. “In bed.” He pulled back to look at her. “
My
bed
. I want you in my bed.”