Embrace The Night (16 page)

Silence reigned for a moment, and she wondered if he’d gone back to sleep. He didn’t move, and his breathing shifted the air, regular and easy.

How did he do that?

Theo could do the same thing—drop off to sleep at a moment’s notice. She’d seen him do it—come to think of it, she’d shared a room with him once before too. Platonically, of course, sleeping in separate beds, when her room had to be redone. That hadn’t been any big deal.

Sage pursed her lips and, telling herself this was no big deal either, she reached out, sliding her hand beneath the covers.

Her fingers didn’t go far before they connected, flat and solid, with warm, smooth skin. Not a gently haired arm, but solid and broad. His chest.

Oops.
And…
holy crap. Solid.

Sage pulled her fingers back, but she was suddenly very warm. Really warm. “Uh, sorry. Uh, Simon?”

“Yes?”

Her fingers were
tingling
. Good grief. “How do you know?”

Beneath the covers, she felt even hotter—as if heat rolled off her, settling in the sheet-covered hollow between them as they lay facing each other. She didn’t need to touch him…she could already feel his heat.

“I did some checking.” Again, his voice was so soft, she could barely hear it. “I don’t know if they have audio,” he added, and she smelled the faint mint of his mouthwash. “But they have a camera.”

“Why?”

The bed moved as he shrugged slightly. “I’ll try to find out. But…they want to see if we can be trusted. Probably anyone new is watched.”

She thought about reaching to touch him again. She wanted to, and had an image of her hand, pale and slender, spread over his dark chest…

“Are you all right?” he asked a moment later, still so very softly. “Any problems today?”

“I’m fine. It’s strange to be back.”

“Bad memories?”

That stopped her for a minute. She had memories of her first twelve years…but were they bad? Or just…memories? Seeing her mother die was horrible, but other than that…she remembered playing, running in the fields, swimming, climbing on old tires that had been stacked and secured, even an elaborate tree house. There’d always been lots of kids to play with, of course. “Some.”

“I’m sorry I snapped at you. Earlier.”

“It didn’t bother me.”

“It didn’t?”

“No. We all get stressed. I thought you were just…tense. All the stuff going on.”

He made a little sound, not really a laugh, not a snort. Just a little choked guff of air. “Yeah.”

All she had to do was move her hand into the space between them, slide it closer, and she’d touch him again. “Simon,” she said, steeling herself…for something. She opened her hand, safely, silently, under the covers, her fingers reaching out into the pocket of heat between them.

“I promised Theo I’d keep you safe,” he said suddenly. A little louder and more distinctly than he’d been speaking.

She nodded, her head rustling softly against the pillow. “I know you will.”

“He was annoyed that he had to stay behind.”

Yes, she knew that. Sage curled her fingers back into her palm. Theo. It could be Theo lying in this bed, facing her as if they were two lovers indulging in some pillow talk. Blind to each other in the dark, but close enough to hear, and feel, and even smell the other.

But it wasn’t Theo. It was Simon. And the very thought made her belly tingle all the way down…low. And intimate. And she realized that she was glad it wasn’t Theo here next to her. That it was Simon.

“I know,” she replied. “He tried to talk me out of going, but I needed to come.”

His head moved against the pillow as if nodding. “We have to be careful. I don’t…trust them.”

“Okay. Do you mean…we need to act differently? More…in love?” Her mouth went dry. What if she had to kiss Simon? Her heart thumped harder, and she thought about those beautiful lips…just a breath away from her right now. She’d kissed Theo, and Owen…would it be any different kissing Simon? Suddenly, she wanted to know.

Really. Wanted. To know. She licked her lips, once again glad for the darkness.

“Love has nothing to do with what goes on here,” he replied in a low, flat voice. “It’s a cold, organized human breeding factory. No emotion, no attachment.” Silence settled over the darkness for a moment. His breathing sounded steady and easy, and she thought he’d fallen asleep. Then, “Good night, Sage.”

Right. As if she were going to get any sleep.

“Good night.”

Simon wasn’t sure when Sage finally fell asleep, but it definitely wasn’t until after the sky had begun to lighten in the east. She’d stopped pretending and her breathing slipped into a natural rhythm instead of the one she’d tried to force it into.

That meant he could finally relax a bit and try to mentally talk down his splitting hard-on. Although with Sage sleeping, there was the added danger of her accidentally rolling toward him, unconsciously moving her hand or legs and possibly connecting with some part of him. Any part of him.

A hasty exit was probably the best option.

He made sure she was asleep before he slipped from the bed, careful not to look toward the camera hidden behind a painting. A dog’s eye had been cut out and the camera lens installed behind it, which he’d found in afternoon after turning himself invisible and taking the opportunity to investigate. He didn’t know if it ran all the time, recording everything that happened, or if it was a live-cam that was only monitored at certain times.

Regardless, Simon had no doubt that some dirty old men used the room-cam as their version of post-apocalyptic porn. And probably other cameras in other rooms as well.

Falling Creek gave him a dirty feeling that worsened the more he learned about it. Not that there was anything wrong with making babies, but Holy Mother of God…the whole regimented setup sickened him, including the very public admonishment that they couldn’t have sex last night because he had to save his sperm.

What the fuck?
Was that what they were watching on the cameras? Checking to make sure he didn’t waste his fucking
sperm
?

He hadn’t been embarrassed at all. Enraged was more the emotion that swept over him.

The sooner he and Sage left here, the better—on more than one account.

Simon glanced toward the bed where a rounded shoulder rose from beneath the covers, richly golden from a wash of freckles. Her glorious hair tumbled over the pillows…including the one on which he’d just rested his head. He knew it smelled of some floral scent, and that the tips of her curls were soft and springy.

He spun and went into the bathroom, hoping they didn’t have a camera posted in the shower. Because he was definitely going to be wasting some sperm.

By the time he finished his shower and came back into the room, dressed prudently in a pair of jeans, Sage was awake. She sat up in bed, the sheets down around her waist, exposing the little pink tank top she wore. She might just as well have been topless for all the good it did.

She was reading a book and looked up as he walked in. “Are you done in there?” Sage asked. She tried to hide the fact that she was staring at his chest.

“It’s all yours,” he replied, finger-combing his damp hair into its ponytail, aware that he had to lift his arms and that his biceps would flex as he did so. And that her cheeks were tinting pink, but she wasn’t looking away.

“Good,” she said, and slipped out of bed, scooting quickly into the bathroom. He caught a glimpse of slender white thighs, pretty feet, and the distracting bounce of her breasts before she disappeared.

He pulled on a shirt and it occurred to him that an unscrupulous guy who could turn invisible could pretend to leave, but stay here and spy if he wanted. A guy who was as warped and perverted as whoever was on the other side of those cameras, which definitely did not include him. It was a revolting thought.

But what the fuck. He was a man for God’s sake, he was made to have thoughts like that…and being around her, in these close quarters, was making him mother-fucking crazy. What the fuck had he been thinking to agree to come with her—
come
being the
non
-operative word?

If she wasn’t involved with Theo, things might be different.
Might
be different. But the fact was, Theo was waiting for her to be returned back, in one piece and unseduced.

By anyone.

A little chill washed over Simon. Was that something he had to worry about here in FC, where the sex flowed like money had in Vegas? Sage being…approached…by another man? Approached or otherwise manhandled into a potential
situation
?

Probably not. Adultery would just screw up their birthing plans.

But Simon wasn’t going to take the chance. They needed to find out if there was anyone who knew anything about Remington Truth, set up the
NAP
, and get the hell out of here.

Especially, please God, before Sage fucking…good God…
ovulated
. What the hell was going to happen then?

Simon heard the toilet flush and then the shower running, and he began to straighten up the room. He made the bed and set Sage’s book on the table.
The Count of Monte Cristo
. A thick one that might have once been terrifying to someone who didn’t learn to read until he was fifteen…but that now was highly appealing. Something to take his mind off things too.

The door to the bathroom opened when he was on page twenty-two, and Simon looked up to see Sage poking her head around. Her face was flushed pink and her hair wrapped in a towel, and steam escaped from the crack of the door around her bare shoulder. “I forgot to grab some clothes, Simon. Would you?”

Rummaging through a woman’s underwear drawer wasn’t high on his list of desirable things to do, although Florita had slyly insisted he “pick out something Mancusi would like” more than once…but since Sage didn’t actually have an underwear drawer but a duffel bag, he wasn’t going to argue. Not only that, but picking out her clothes enabled him to select the loosest, most conservative attire she had, even though the task had the drawback of him having to decide between black bikini panties or red string bikinis.

God was really making His displeasure with Simon clear.

“Enjoying the book?” she asked, coming out of the bathroom, fully dressed. Her hair coiled in dark, damp curls around her shoulders, leaving little wet spots on the shoulders of her shirt.

“So far,” he said.

Then, to his surprise, she came over to where he was sitting in the corner chair and settled on the arm next to him. Her ass was nearly brushing his upper arm and the fresh, clean scent of her washed hair filled his nose. “I want to show you one of the best parts,” she said, and, leaning over, began to flip through the book.

Simon didn’t move. He just concentrated on keeping his hands still and his breathing regular.

“Here,” she said at last, near the end of the 1,200-page book. “This is one of my favorite scenes.”

“You’ve already read it?” he managed to ask.

She just looked at him, her blue eyes so very close. Very steady. He forgot to breathe.

“It’s a great book. Worth reading over and over again,” she replied. “Edmond Dantès is a wonderful character. He’s betrayed by three of his so-called friends and imprisoned for thirteen years. Then he comes back and seeks revenge on them as the Count of Monte Cristo.”

He looked down at the book and saw…ah. So clever. He glanced at her with a brief smile of admiration and comprehension, and began to read.

She got up and walked away while he perused through the pages that she had inserted into the book at the very end. It was a list of names. His smiled widened. The documents, or at least some of them, from Remington Truth’s jump drive.

Brilliant.

This was his chance to see if Mancusi was on the list of likely Cult of Atlantis members, and he quickly found the
M
’s. No Leonide Mancusi or Mancusi, Leonide. Or anything remotely like that. He hadn’t really expected to see him in this sort of company, but Simon never assumed.

He flipped through a few more pages, uninterested in the rest of the list, although he did see Quent’s father, Parris Fielding, on there, and closed the book. There would be more time to study the list and the other documents later.

“You were right,” he said, putting it on the table. “Great scene. I think I’m really going to enjoy this book.”

“I’ve hardly been able to put it down,” she said. “We might have to fight over who gets to read it when. But don’t lose my bookmark.”

“Let’s go,” he said, standing. The sooner they got their mission accomplished, the sooner they could get the hell back to Envy.

The first real sign of trouble was when Simon and Sage approached the main gate. Unsure of their welcome, they’d left the supplies for the
NAP
, and Sage’s little computer, hidden in an old car trunk a few miles beyond the city walls.

Now they meant to retrieve them, under the guise of taking a walk.

“Can’t let you through,” said the guards. “It’s too dangerous.”

“What?” Sage asked. “What’s dangerous?”

Simon didn’t bother. He knew they weren’t going back through those gates now that they’d come in. For him, of course, it wasn’t a problem.

“There’s
gangas
out there, and lions and other feral animals,” was the reply. This guard was not the friendly Bennie Corrigan from yesterday. But she remembered him as being a shy, pimply teen who liked to throw rocks at trees. Apparently, authority had gone to his head.

“
Gangas
don’t come out during the day,” Sage replied. “And we didn’t see any sign of wild animals on our way here.”

“Sorry, ma’am. No one’s going through the gates today.”

“But—”

“Sage! There you are.”

They turned to see a slender woman hurrying toward them. “That’s Penny,” Sage told Simon, leaning close enough to brush against him. “She’s the one who—Hi, Penny,” she said.

“We need to get your temp taken right away. It’s supposed to be the first thing you do every morning,” she chided. Penny was a grim-faced woman with iron gray hair streaked with white. Her hands were skeletal in their thinness. “And then breakfast. I know you haven’t eaten breakfast, but it’s imperative that you do. That’s when you get your vitamins too.”