Blood Bound (25 page)

No, Cam was neither gullible nor truly optimistic. He was desperate. He needed to believe that there was some kind of greater good out there to give his life meaning. Even when his life was currently chained via blood to one of the largest, most dangerous Skilled crime families in the country. And that desperation—that need to believe—was what stared down at me, when I was ready to die for him, and he was ready to live for me.

“No, Liv,” he repeated. “Don’t give me any of that ‘cruel fate&217; bullshit. I don’t believe in it, and neither do you. We don’t know if Noelle was seeing the etched-in-stone future, or just one possibility. There aren’t enough Seers around for us to really know any of it for sure.”

He was right about that. Seers were so rare the Skill often skipped entire generations. Elle was literally the only Seer I’d ever met, and the only other one
she’d
ever known was a dead grandmother on her father’s side.

“There’s so much we don’t know. So much we may
never
know. But I do know this—we can make this work. We
will
make this work. And all you have to do is stay. That’s it, Olivia.” He eyed me expectantly, his heart not merely on his sleeve, but in his entire bearing. In every breath he took, and in the one he held, waiting for my answer.

So I kissed him.

Then I kissed him again with everything I had stored up from six years without him. With all the love, and fear, and parts of myself I’d kept boxed up and thought I’d never feel again.

And suddenly kissing wasn’t enough. I didn’t realize I’d taken off his shirt until it fell from my fingers. Then his chest was warm beneath my hands, and I realized all over again—feeling the differences I’d only seen earlier—that he’d changed. He was stronger. Harder. And I hoped with every breath I had left that those changes were limited to his physique. Was it possible that the syndicate could have made him this tough on the outside, yet failed to harden him on the inside?

Then my fingers found sudden roughness among the smooth, hard ripples low on his stomach. I pulled away from his kiss and looked down to find the round, puckered scar. “You got shot looking for me.” I traced the thick scar again.

“That doesn’t make it your fault,” he insisted, pulling my chin up until our gazes met again. But
didn’t
that make it my fault?

“If I’d never left, you wouldn’t have come looking for me.”

Cam groaned. “Don’t start playing the what-if game, Liv. That one never ends, and it’ll drive you crazy.” I must have looked unconvinced, because he grinned like he used to when we had plenty of time and nothing to lose. “I know a much better way to drive you crazy….”

Crazy had never sounded so good.

We wound up on the couch, making out like college kids. Like we had all through our first year together, when no touch was ever enough, no taste ever quite satisfying. We’d weathered the drought, and now we danced in the rain. And it felt good.

I left my shirt on to keep from aggravating my wounded arm, but his hands wandered beneath the material, and they were so warm, and just rough enough to feel real. I ran my fingers over his chest and arms, exploring the new planes and ridges, while his hands slid beneath my borrowed skirt. And that
did
drive me crazy, just like it used to, only worse. I mean, better. Had I just forgotten how good he felt, or had he learned a thing or two in the past few years?

I had one bitter moment to wonder who he’d learned
from,
then I pushed that thought aside. Just as he pushed my skirt up and slid down the length ofmy body. My head fell back in anticipation, and too late I realized the problem. Too late, I sat up and pushed the borrowed material back into place.

But he’d already seen.

“What. The
fuck.
Is that?” he demanded, voice low and hard, anger and betrayal dulling the shine in his eyes.

“Nothing,” I lied out of habit, stretching the material so that it covered not just the mark on my thigh, but both of my legs, now curled beneath me. My pulse raced so fast my vision was starting to go weird, but there was nothing I could do. I couldn’t take it back. Couldn’t make him unsee what he’d seen. And I sure as hell couldn’t get that mark off my thigh just by wishing.

“Nothing!” Cam threw the copious, gauzy material back and grabbed my left ankle, then pulled my leg out straight so that I slid onto my back, my stenciled secret bared once again. “That is not nothing! That is hypocrisy, and lies, and fucking
betrayal.
Are you spying for him? Or recruiting? Is that what this is?”

I tried to pull my leg free and when he wouldn’t let go, I kicked him square in the chest with my other foot. Cam fell back against the arm of the couch, grunting in pain and surprise. I rolled onto the floor on my knees, gasping at the pain in my arm, and was on my feet in an instant, backing across the room. “Don’t you ever touch me like that again. Not
ever.
” I used the anger burning bright inside me to dry up tears I couldn’t let fall. “I may have to take that from him, but I don’t have to take it from
you.
” And if Cam didn’t think I could defend myself, he hadn’t been watching me closely enough. If I weren’t contractually prohibited from seriously injuring Ruben Cavazos, I’d have ripped his balls off and fed them to him a year ago.

Cam stood, his expression a tangle of horror and remorse. And anger. “I didn’t… I would never…”

“I know.” I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, fighting for calm. Cam wasn’t the enemy. He would never even
try
to hurt me. In fact, he’d kill to protect me. But lying on a couch, on my back, forced to bare my mark… It all felt too familiar. And I’d never wanted so badly to take back a single minute of my life. Not the moment I’d bound myself to Kori, Anne and Elle. Not the moment I’d left Cam. And not the moment I’d signed with Cavazos. Hell, taking that one back would make things sooo much worse than they were now….

Which was only one of the reasons I’d never wanted Cam to see that mark.

“Cedo nulli…”
He laughed harshly, and I wanted to die, just a little bit. “What is that, a joke? ‘I yield to no one.’ It’s
bullshit!
” he roared. “You yield to the fucking enemy!”

“It’s not bullshit, and it’s not a joke. It’s a goal.” I took a deep breath, grasping for calm. “I’m sorry, Cam, but this is really none of your business. So you need to just let it go.”

“None of my
business?
” He crossed his arms over his chest, and I got my first glimpse of what he must look like when Tower used him as muscle. He was solid and broad. A brick wall. Or maybe more of hammer. Either way, I couldn’t imagine anyone messing with him, armed or not. But I had no choice.

“Yes. It doesn’t have anything to do with Anne or her family, or with…us.” At least, us as we’d been a few minutes earlier. Us, as I wanted us to be.

“You sure considered
my
marks
your
business this afternoon.”

“Yours are standard syndicate marks, binding you to obey Tower’s every word,” I said through clenched teeth, trying to decide whether I even owed him an explanation. After all, I’d never actually said I didn’t work for Cavazos, had I? And I wasn’t bound to the syndicate—not the way Cam was bound to Tower’s, anyway. “My situation is completely different.”

But he wasn’t buying it. “How exactly is you having a mark different from me having a mark?”

“It’s different because I hate every minute of it. Every single second. I feel like I’ve rolled around in the mud and it’s oozed into my nose and ears, and other places I can’t even reach, and I’ll never get clean. I feel filthy. I fight the binding with every breath I take. But you’ve been bound to Tower for six years and until today, I bet you never even
thought
about trying to get out of it. Hell, you reenlisted and took an early promotion! That’s the difference, Cam.”

“That’s not a difference—it’s like looking in a mirror. You think I want to be bound to Tower? Or to anyone else? Believe it or not, I don’t like marching in their little rows, following orders like a tin soldier. But I don’t have any choice, and from where I’m standing the only difference between your situation and mine is that at least I’m serving on my
feet.
”

I felt my cheeks flame and fought to turn humiliation into anger, because then at least I’d be in control of my own emotions, if nothing else. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. This isn’t what it looks like….”

Cam stood, all puffed up with fury, but I could see the fear and pain in his eyes. He was hiding behind anger, just like me. “Well, that’s good, because it
looks
like that’s Ruben Cavazos’s live mark on your thigh!”

“Okay, that part’s what it looks like, but it doesn’t mean what you think it means. I’m not in the skin trade. This is nothing like what happened to Van. And I’m not spying on you, nor am I trying to recruit you. You and Anne came to
me,
remember?”

“Olivia, Tower’s men
shot
me, just so I’d need their help, then be in their debt. I know how this works. I know what the syndicate—
either
syndicate—will do to get whoever they want. And I know what a mark on the thigh means. If he’s not turning you out, he’s keeping you in.” His voice cracked on the last words, and my heart felt as if it was cracking along with his, one excruciating inch at a time. “You’re his personal whore, just like Nick said.”

“No, I am
not.
” Pain and anger coiled so tightly inside me that I could no longer tell the difference between them. “And don’t you
ever
say tat to me again.” I stomped across the room toward him and propped one bare foot on the coffee table, then pulled Van’s skirt up so he could see the mark again. “Take a closer look,” I demanded, but his gaze never left mine, his eyes shiny with unspent, angry tears. “Look at it!” I shouted, and finally he did. One quick glance.

“It’s not red, Cam,” I pointed out. “I’m not his whore, or anyone else’s. In fact, that mark is like a fucking chastity
force field.
Thanks to our contract, he can’t go past it without my permission. Which he has never had, nor will ever have.”

Cam exhaled, his relief almost palpable. Then he frowned. “If you’re not…sleeping with him, why the hell is his mark on your thigh?”

“Because if you give him an inch, he’ll take the whole damn planet. Cavazos wanted the mark on my arm, but I told him I wouldn’t wear it where anyone else could see it. His compromise was that he got to pick the unseen location—and ink the tattoo himself. I consider myself lucky it’s not on my ass.”

Cam blinked, and the momentary confusion cleared. “He’s a Binder?”

I nodded slowly and lowered my leg. “He’s not very good with a verbal or written seal—though his staff is top-notch—but he’s a damn strong flesh Binder. Didn’t you ever wonder what his Skill is?”

Cam shrugged. “I just assumed that was privileged information. Tower would kill anyone who leaked details about what he can and can’t do. Not that any of us could actually blab, thanks to the binding.”

Hmm
. Maybe that was in Cavazos’s boilerplate, too. Good thing my contract was custom…

“Flesh binding is how he got his start,” I said. “In his twenties, a couple of years before the revelation, he conned a few of his friends and cousins into signing unfavorable bonds of loyalty to him, and he inked the marks into their flesh himself. And the syndicate grew from there. He takes a cut of everything, and he still does some of the marks himself. His organization is older than Tower’s, you know.” According to Cavazos, his was one of the oldest Skilled syndicates in the country, and I’d found no reason not to believe that.

I sank onto the edge of the coffee table and Cam sat on the couch in front of me. “So what do you do for him?” But he still looked as if he didn’t really want the answer.

“I don’t do anything for him on a regular basis. This is a one-shot deal. He needs someone found and once I fulfill my part of the deal, the mark goes dead, and I’m done with him. No extensions. No noncompete clauses. Nothing complicated.”

“If it’s so simple, why the binding? Why didn’t he just hire you, like everyone else?”

“The contract is simple, but he’s not. Ruben likes to own things. Specifically, people. Especially women. I needed to win this particular job, and he knew it, which gave him the upper hand. He wouldn’t hire me without a binding.”

“But you negotiated, right? You must have, to get out of the standard clauses.”

“Yeah. Under the terms we bot agreed to, he can’t tell anyone I’m bound to him, or what I’m doing for him.” That one turned out to be a mistake on my part, because it meant he couldn’t tell Meika what his business with me really was, leaving her free to draw the obvious conclusions.

“But he can’t…touch you?”

Shit. This was the part I
really
didn’t want Cam to know. “He gets to…um…” I closed my eyes, trying to remember the exact wording. “‘Physically express either his pleasure or displeasure with my performance.’”

“Which means he gets to feel you up and hit you.” Anger bled into his features and the couch groaned beneath him as he leaned back.

“Yes, up to a point. But I get to hit back.” Also up to a point.

“Damn it, Liv!” Cam stood and stomped across the room, a spring coiled tight and ready to burst free. “Why would you agree to that?”

“Because he had the advantage and I
needed
the job.” Worse than Cam would ever know. “At the time, I thought I was being smart for insisting on limits, but it turns out I’m not as good with contract language as I thought I was.”

“I hear
some
people spend years in law school studying that very thing.”

“Yeah, well, I didn’t have years and I don’t know any lawyers. But I think I did pretty well, considering what I had to work with. He can’t make me sleep with him or with anyone else, and he can’t use weapons against me or do any permanent damage. Those were my deal-breakers.”

“I’d like to break
him.
” Cam pulled me up and wrapped his arms around me, speaking into my hair. “I can’t stand the thought of his hands on you.”