Through the Static (9 page)

Chapter Ten

All the fight seemed to drain out of Aurelia at once as she melted into him. He caught her and kept her close, trying to give her back some of the strength she'd shown him all day. It was his turn to murmur “I've got you” as he stroked her hair.

She breathed deeply against his neck, her lips grazing his skin with each exhale, making him want nothing more than to kiss her throat and her mouth. She'd worked so hard to get them here and to keep them safe, though. And now it was up to him to take care of her.

Cradling her in his arms, he surveyed their surroundings. Like any basement sanctuary, the space was dark and chilly, the furnishings Spartan. The big room had been roughly divided in half, with two sets of bunk beds, a table and chairs and a galley kitchen lining one side, and rows of lab equipment and file cabinets dominating the other. A couple of closed doors stood at the far end.

She shivered in his embrace, and he pressed a gentle kiss to her temple as he rubbed her arm, still taking care around the places where she'd been hurt. Over on the wall near the light switches, he spied a climate control panel. He should let her go, but—no. Not now. He couldn't. He shifted her, bending to slide an arm under her thighs and lifting her against his chest. She let out a low sound of surprise but didn't protest as he walked her over to the panel and keyed in a program he thought she'd find comfortable.

As he turned back toward the room, she stirred, pressing a kiss to his pulse point and sliding a hand up his chest to rest, soft and cool at the base of his skull. “I should look in your head.”

His throat tightened. Emotion surged at the gentleness of her touch and the promise of her taking care of him, but it was all mixed with the lingering sense of dread. She wanted to set him free—free from his Three and presumably free from her.

Unable to cope with the latter possibility, he shook his head. “Let me take care of you first.”

Her indecision was clear in her mind. He didn't know how else to convince her. Even though it hurt him, he trailed his fingertips over her shoulder and braced himself against her squeak of pain.

“Please?” he asked.

She sighed, her thoughts accepting. He hesitated, then headed toward the closest of the beds. Setting her down on the lower bunk, he lingered with his fingertips on her skin for a moment. He leaned in to kiss her cheek before letting go.

In her mind, he saw the medical supplies in the closet behind one of the closed doors, and he nodded and stood. The pull to touch her grew with every step he took across the concrete floor. He opened the closet to find it arranged exactly how she'd shown him, and as soon as he located the kit, he headed back to her.

He paused at the sink in the kitchen where he scrubbed his knuckles and under his nails. They were filthy with dirt, but they also glowed with contact. He'd touched her with these hands, stitched her flesh together. Felt her secret skin and made her come.

They were killer's hands, but they had brought healing, too. Pleasure.

They came in and out of focus as he gazed at them, rinsing the soap and grime away. And he wondered if he could rinse everything else away, too. If he could be someone else, if she would only let him stay with her.

He turned the water off and dried his hands before returning to her. She was staring at him oddly. Just how much of his thoughts had she been able to see? She knew the violence he had wrought already, but the thought of her learning more of what he'd done made him rub his chest against the ache there.

Who would want to stay tethered to someone like him?

Avoiding her eyes, he sat on the edge of the bed beside her and reached for the hem of her top. She stopped him with a touch to his wrist. He met her gaze and swallowed.

“Thank you. For taking care of me.”

His throat hurt as he told her, “Always.”

Together, they got her shirt off, and he sucked in a breath at the sight of her, bare and beautiful. The night before, he'd been able to restrain his need to touch, clinging to his role as a medic, but everything was different now. He grazed his fingertips along the curve of her breast, desire uncoiling inside him.

“Jinx?”

Her voice was uncertain, her expression more so. He felt the conflict in her thoughts, too, her wish for contact and closeness battling her efforts to focus on what they needed to do. It was a focus he should have had himself.

“I'm sorry.” He pulled his hand from her softness and shifted his gaze to her shoulder. The bandages there were curling at the edges, the fabric as dirty as the skin around it. His head swam.

He'd taken her on the fucking ground.

“I'm so sorry,” he repeated, fingering the edge of the gauze.

Her hand stopped him, curling around his palm. “Don't be.”

Images of his body moving over hers made both the link and his blood flood with warmth. She'd wanted it. She'd wanted him as much as he'd wanted her.

“All right,” he said, his voice unsteady. His gaze moved up her body, to the knotted tangle of her hair and the smudges on her face. He ran a fingertip along her jaw. “I need to get you cleaned up, though.”

She tilted her head to the other closed door. “In there.”

Against her mental protests, he lifted her into his arms again, grabbing the medical kit as he rose.

The bathroom was small, all cold, white tile and efficient lines. He set her down on the counter and forced himself to concentrate on her wounds instead of on the swaths of skin reflected in the mirror behind her. With all the gentleness he could muster, he unwound the bandage.

Beneath it, her flesh was a patchwork of bruises, the purple mottling stark against her paleness. It hurt to look at.

“Is it that bad?” She was trying to sound flippant, but her fear pushed past the bravado.

He focused his gaze on the line of stitches he'd sewn into her flesh. The torn edges around them were drawn together tightly, the wound nearly closed. He prodded her to twist so he could look at the exit site. That, too, was clean.

“No,” he said, the word ragged with his relief. “It's not so bad.”

The regenerator he'd injected into the tissue the night before had done its job, knitting the muscle and skin back together again, and there was no sign of infection, in spite of their lack of care. In a few days she'd be as good as new.

He took a moment to look over the other places where she'd been scraped and bruised, and he grimaced when he saw the new marks on her back from where she'd slid against the ground in the midst of their coupling in the woods. All of it was superficial, though.

“You'll be fine,” he assured her. He sighed and pressed his lips against her neck.

Separating himself from her, he crossed the tile to the shower stall. He swung the door open and started the water. It was cold, but at least it ran clear. Hoping it would warm up, he turned back to her and had to swallow a groan at what he saw, his hand gripping the frame of the shower to stabilize himself.

She stood beside the counter naked, all slim waist and lush curves, the clothes he'd dressed her in twice now on the floor. Her features and frame were so delicate, but with her hair a mess, her bruised skin streaked with dirt, she looked like a warrior. She was a painting of contradictions. And never in his life had he seen anything so beautiful.

Still overwhelmed with the way his body could bloom with heat, he stayed there, his spine pressed against the wall as he stared at her. Her expression faltered for a second, but then her cheeks pinked. While he was trying to keep his thoughts to himself, the sheer force of his desire for her had to be leaking over the edges, filling the space of their link.

“Even like this?” she asked, gesturing at all that naked flesh. At the dirt and scrapes.

“Especially like this.”

All his designs on bathing her receded. He didn't have the control to do it without wanting to feel the heat inside her again, and she was tired. She deserved better.

He closed his eyes and took a couple of deep breaths, then peeled himself from the tile. The air was growing heavy with steam now, so he reached a hand back under the spray, adjusting the temperature until it was comfortably hot. He stepped out of the way and held his arm out.

She surprised him when, instead of getting in, she stopped before him and put her hands on his skin, pushing his shirt up his torso to touch his waist.

“I don't think—” he started, but he didn't get far.

“I thought you wanted to wash me.” An image from his fantasy of sliding soapy fingers through her hair drifted through his vision. He hadn't realized she'd seen it.

“I do. But…”

She drew the fabric higher, leaning in to whisper, “Be naked with me.”

Her mind, guarded as it was, teemed over with heat intense enough to match his own, thoughts of skin and touch and the completeness born from the place where their flesh and thoughts enmeshed.

His willpower crumbled. As he pulled his shirt over his head, her nimble fingers wrestled with the rest of his clothes until he was as bare as she was. He was hard, his cock aching with the need to touch and be touched. It was all so new and yet so familiar now. She took his hand and led him into the stall, then closed the door behind them.

The place had not been designed for two, the space cramped, but it was all the better for that closeness. He placed himself between her body and the spray, shielding her face from it and pressing himself against her. With his hands on her hips, he leaned in and kissed her mouth, tasting her lips and tongue. His needy flesh was trapped between them, her softness sliding against him as he lifted her up and pinned her to the tile with his hips.

And it was such a relief as she opened to him, kissing back and combing fingers through his hair, scratching at his scalp and gripping tightly at his shoulder. Her mind spread just as eagerly, and the depth of her want still floored him. Made him touch harder, delve more deeply.

He slipped his fingers through the silky place between her thighs, listening to her thoughts for cues on what felt good to her. Everything felt good to him—her breath at his ear and her arms around his neck, the heat of her legs as they wrapped around his hips. As he circled higher, rubbing tighter at soft flesh and pressing his fingertips just inside, she threw her head back, bracing herself and clutching at his spine.

“Good?” he asked, his mouth open against her throat. His voice was ragged, his every instinct telling him to push inside and make her his again.

“Yes.”

It was an answer to both questions, the one he'd spoken aloud and the one he hadn't. Her thoughts were all of fullness and of a hard body thrusting tightly into hers—a plea, a whisper and a name.
His
name.

He let out a groaning exhale and pulled his fingers from her flesh, curling his palm around her thigh to spread her, pressing her fast against the tile. He fitted himself to her opening, fit his mouth to her breath, pushed deep, and then he was inside. Flush against her, fully held within her body, hot and wet as he surged.

Thoughts of fullness and need poured through the connection. Desire like sparks, and it was hers. Desire for
him
.

His skin sang with the brilliance of sensation and with the welcome embrace of her mind as she took him in, giving herself to him. He laid himself as bare, feeling naked and open as her presence sank through his memories and his flesh. As she clung to him and kissed the water from his face, kissed his name into his skin.

Over and over, he pressed himself flush to her, sliding hot into the closest place to home he'd ever known. And there was no such thing as too much—no moment when she pulled back or begged for patience. No such thing as enough. The harder he pushed, the more she pulled, and he couldn't stop. He couldn't stop.

“Don't,” she breathed. “Don't stop. Keep—”

This time, as the feeling swept over him, taking him to the edge of oblivion, he recognized the heat for what it was. The building inferno in Aurelia's body was a perfect match for his, and he drove them on until there was nothing else but to give in to it.

“Fall with me,” he whispered.

It felt just like that. Like plummeting into the abyss but knowing there was someplace safe to land.

In a hot rush, his flesh succumbed, and their connection exploded, wires and thoughts all knitting, infinitely entwining as her body pulsed around him, pulling his orgasm from the deepest part of his being. He rode the waves of it with a complete understanding of what was happening between them, accepting what she gave him and offering all of himself in return.

“Take it,” he said, a breath and a silent plea. “Take all of me.”

As each shivering rush of his climax rocked him, he threw himself into her thoughts, immersing his mind in the warm envelopment of hers. This time, he was the one who searched.

And saw it all. Her hesitation to let him in. The sting of betrayal and the shadowy face of a man. Her training not to trust.

And her desire to. Her desire for
his
face to replace the one that hid in darkness
.

In that moment, as the final pulse of his release emptied into her, he felt her conflict and her need. Her loneliness in the world she had made for herself, held apart by her own fear. He wanted to pierce it, to breach her solitude and her defenses. He wanted to be hers.

Slowly, still reeling with the aftershocks of pleasure and of such perfect intimacy, he let them slide down the wall until he was sitting beneath the spray, her body wrapped around him and her heartbeat racing in sympathy with his. The connection narrowed down from that endless depth back to a steady thrum, a constant presence in the ache of his soul. Even though he couldn't feel the full extent of her mind anymore, what he had seen echoed through him.

He held her close and pressed his lips against her collarbone.

When she offered him his freedom, she wasn't rejecting him.