Cease and Desist (The IMA Book 4) (9 page)

The consequences would come later. For now, we would wreak our own brand of chaos.

Chapter Six

Reparation

Christina

It was dark in the basement, cold. Fear tore at me the way the child cruelly tears at a captive insect's wings with its hands. And there were hands on me. Hot, cruel hands claiming my body as their own.

Where am I?

I couldn't struggle. I couldn't even move my arms. I was paralyzed: a not-person. Nothing.

No! This isn't real, wake up, wake up—

But it was real, wasn't it?

(“You got me all excited.”)

Because I had been through this all before.

Eyes as sharp as broken bottle glass, slicing my soul to ribbons. Yes, I knew this place. This feeling.

This fear.

(“Now you'll never leave this place alive.”)

Only one person could make me feel this way.

But my heart still thudded with panic, and that buzzing sense of wrongness didn't leave. It wasn't until I caught a glimpse of the face of my captor that I realized — the man standing over me wasn't Adrian.

It was
Michael
.

I awoke with a gasp, covered with sweat and unable to move, to think. Fear surrounded me in a chilly haze, seeping deep into my bones the way only old wounds can.

Michael stirred beside me. “Christina?” His voice, thick with sleep, was completely different from the one in my dreams, and yet — so very much the same. I felt his eyes on me in the darkness. “What's wrong?”

I looked at his face, which I could only just make out. As cliché as it sounded, he was beautiful; his cheekbones were delineated in a way that reminded me of chiseled sandstone cliffs, and the harsh geometry of their carved-out silhouettes. His face provided the perfect frame for his slanted green eyes, and his mouth — the only spot of softness in that hard and otherwise intractable face; it was the mouth of a seasoned sinner, just as cutting as the rest of him, but with a sting that could be mistaken for sweet.

I could feel his every heaving breath. I could feel his heartbeat. He was a weapon — a living, breathing weapon. Beautiful in the way that a sword or a gun can be beautiful, and terrifying for the same reason: the inherent power of his body was described in each line of corded muscle in his sleek, streamlined frame. He could kill; he had killed — and by his own admission, he would do it again.

I knew this better than most. But it was still hard to believe. Especially now. What was it about us, as humans, that drove us to make apologies for beautiful things? Did being in a perfect body make a corrupt heart any less corrupt?

“Christina?”

I whispered, “I had the dream again.”

I saw him withdraw from me; his face, as he pulled away, was like a slamming door, and that hurt me. It hurt me, and it angered me, because what right did he have to take offense? I hated that I could carry the memories of what he had done with me, and yet still feel bad that my mentioning them would cause him grief and me, guilt. That
I
should feel responsible.

Being a victim is supposed to set you free; it acquits you of any agency, any sense of responsibility to the person who did you harm.
It's not your fault
, they say.
Leave him,
they say. Nobody ever tells you what to do if leaving isn't an option.

They just call you stupid. A dumb bitch.

Sympathy is only meted out if you follow all of society's rules for how a victim is supposed to behave.

I traced the scar on Michael's cheek. He had so many. Two scars on both sides of his chest — one from a knife, one from a bullet. He had another scar on his stomach that coiled around his abdomen like a snake, corkscrewing below his navel. There were quite a few shallow scars on his arms, as well, grazing wounds, and I supposed that they were from those instances when those he had been hired to kill had managed to fight back. I tried not to think about that, though, because it only reminded me of what I was trying so hard to forget.

He turned his head away, and I let my hand fall to the mattress. “You have changed.”

Michael wrapped his fingers around mine, stilling them. “Don't.”

“I'm sorry.” I was startled into apologizing. It was instinctual, as was so much else I did. Growing up, my mother had been quick to take offense: an apology for whatever imagined transgression I was guilty of had staved off many unpleasant arguments.

But Michael was not my mother. “Don't fucking apologize,” he hissed, so full of fire that I flinched. He felt me recoil, and his hand tightened over mine, briefly. “Don't,” he said again, softer. “Not for that.”

“It's because of Suraya.” I felt compelled to explain, as if I could suck all the emotions out of my thoughts by condensing them to impartial words and logic and then taking a few mental steps back. “I have these … dreams when I'm anxious or afraid.”

Because you still make me anxious and afraid, and the unresolved conflict of my days in captivity still resides somewhere deep in my subconscious.

“I'm worried about what will happen to her. That whatever does happen to her will be my fault.”

I hate that who I want to be and what I want to be seem so far removed, and I hate that part of that is your fault. I hate that more of it is my fault.

“She volunteered.” Rather than easing him, my words appeared to have the opposite effect. And I couldn't help but notice that he had said “she volunteered” with the same self-assured hostility as the men who say, “she was asking for it.”

“We threw her to the wolves,” I said.

He arched an eyebrow. “Why?” he said, “did you have someone else in mind?”

I didn't answer right away and he sat up, jostling me from his lap. The muscles in his stomach contracted with his change in posture, highlighting the ridges of his abdomen, and the deep V of his pelvis. My mouth went dry: it was the body of a capable man, a dangerous man. And his face — his face was even more dangerous, because of how easily he could take you off guard.

“I don't know.”

Michael studied me intently. “For a moment, you looked like you had someone in mind.”

“I would never — ”

“What?” Michael asked, leaning over me. “What would you never do?”

When it came down to brass tacks, what wouldn't I do to survive? Maybe nothing. Maybe everything. Two and a half years ago, I was a naive senior at an all-girls' Catholic school. Never in a million years could I have envisioned myself standing where I was now, doing what I was now. Doing
who
I was now. Making jokes like that. I, too, had changed.

And not necessarily for the better.

Michael was still looming over me. The heat of him, the smell of him, it was overpowering. I leaned back, sucking in a breath when he used one of his arms to keep me barred in. “Don't do that,” I said. “Don't use your body to intimidate me.”

He moved a fraction of an inch. “You still haven't answered my question.”

I met his gaze levelly. Slowly, he moved his arm and leaned back, giving me more space. The heat of him vanished, and as the cold rushed in to fill the place he'd occupied so did my ability to breathe.

“I guess I don't know what I'd do under the right circumstances — or the wrong ones.”

“No, you don't. You can't.” Michael rolled over to rest on one side, propping himself up on one arm. “People reveal a lot about their true nature when their lives are in danger. It's often a helluva lot less flattering than they'd like. Selfish and willing to do anything to survive — that's mankind for you.”

“That's a terrible way to view the world.”

Michael shrugged his shoulders. “Tell me you would happily switch places with Suraya, given the chance. That you weren't secretly relieved that you weren't chosen to prostitute yourself for our cause.”

My breathing faltered.
Had I been that obvious?
“You son of a bitch — ”

“Tell me,” he said, “without lying.”

My shoulders sank.

I couldn't. He knew it. We both knew it.

Michael snorted. “That's what I thought.”

I decided right then and there that he couldn't have the last word. Not on this. “When she agreed to this mission, she wasn't thinking clearly.”

He'd started to close his eyes, but at that they opened. “You'd be the expert on that,” he said.

Asshole. “She was letting her emotions cloud her judgment. You said yourself that emotions make people stupid.” I struggled to keep my voice calm. Inside, I was seething: a rattling pot of emotions left to boil. “You heard her in the conference room. She wants revenge; it's all but blinded her to the potential consequences of her actions. She is
delusional
.”

“I debriefed her myself,” he said. “Are you saying I didn't do my job right? My job, which I've been doing for the last ten fucking years?”

“There's a difference between knowing the consequences  and realizing how they apply to you directly,” I told him, knowing my words would cut because one of Michael's weaknesses was that he could, in fact, be too impulsive. Predictably, his eyes narrowed. “The way Suraya is now, she might take some dangerous risks. She might get herself killed.”

Michael was silent for a few beats. “All right,” he said at last. “You done? Now here's what I think. I think you feel guilty that you didn't volunteer. I think you've probably tried to rationalize the situation to yourself. Tell yourself that you're not qualified, that you wouldn't have been able to do the job, that I wouldn't have let you go — which are all true, by the way, although probably not for the reasons you believe. I think you're bringing this up now because you want me to validate you. You want me to tell you that you're a good, selfless human being.”

His eyes flicked over me.

“Which I'm not going to do,” he added. “It's fine if you want to be selfish, darlin, but don't try to couch it in what it ain't. This isn't compassion — this is Catholic guilt.”

He saw through me as if I were a pane of solid glass. It was as if all my feelings and secret shames were just passing scenery to him; it was the worst feeling in the world. My self-loathing imploded, and then turned outward. I lunged for him, in spite of my promise to myself that I wouldn't get physical with him, ever, and he caught my wrists.

“You really don't want to do that.”

“Fuck you,” I said.

He smiled. It wasn't a particularly nice smile, but it wasn't one of his nasty ones, either — not that I saw much difference between the two at the moment. “You don't want to do that, either.” He ran his thumbs along the insides of my wrists. “Tempting, though.”

I tugged at my wrists with more violence than was strictly necessary. I was still bristling from the nightmare, and his touch sent fear whipping across my skin like static. “Stop it. Don't you dare belittle me. My concerns are valid.”

“Are they?”

“Let. Go.”

He did, and I rolled away to the other side of the bed, dragging the sheet up to my breasts. All my doubts had been buried beneath the surface this whole time, and with almost no effort Michael had dug them up, and shoved the rotten things under my nose.

“Did I hurt your feelings?” he drawled. “I didn't think you were the type of woman who liked to bury her head in the sand. I thought you could handle the truth. Was I wrong?”

I stared at my knees, pretending I couldn't see him watching me. Beneath his mockery, I sensed faint, but real concern. Concern that he had pushed me too far, too hard. Pushing me away had been the intent, but he was always underestimating his own strength — physically, and mentally. He had been an interrogator for the IMA. He knew how to get inside people's heads and screw them up from the inside-out. It made him a good reader, but almost impossible for him to relate. And so instead of letting me in, he pushed me away. Every time I let myself yield to him just a little bit, he pushed me away.

But then, I pushed him away, too.

Noises came from the other side of the closed door. Voices, rising and falling in pitch. I tucked my knees into my chest and pushed my face into the cradle of my hands. If this was love, I wondered why it had to hurt so much. Why it often left my heart sore and aching.

The sheets rustled, the bed dipping as Michael moved. I tensed as he wrapped his arms around me, over the sheet. “Suraya will be fine.”

I wasn't at the right angle to look at his face properly. All I could catch was a glimpse of stubbled cheekbone, the side of his nose, an eye. Michael was not good at consoling. This had been what kept him alive, but made him brash and callous. Coming from him, this was like a full scale apology. Apparently, he believed that he'd been too harsh with me.

Good.

He rested his chin on my head. As he exhaled through his nose, his breath ruffled my hair, sending tingles across my scalp that rippled down my spine. I hugged the sheet tighter, even though his body heat was making me uncomfortably warm. He had extended the olive branch, but I couldn't reach for it just yet. Not in good faith.

“Her emotions made her a slave to him before,” I pointed out. “It could happen again.”