Hot for His Hostage (30 page)

“And the corruption,” Ghid added. “He had things and people, especially your mom,
right where he wanted them. The Austin location was nice and remote, just where he
wanted to keep your mom for good…now that he’d developed full feelings for her.” He
finished the water—and slammed down the glass. Several fissures ran up the length
of the thing before it collapsed into several fragments atop the table. “That was
when he made up the blackmail sandwich for Mel.”  

Forget the snowball. Shay’s stomach turned into a full-on warhead of dismay. “Blackmail?”
he fired. “In what way?”

“Easiest way there is.” Ghid’s gaze turned the color of a tormented tornado sky. “He
used the two of you.”

“What?” He and Tait sputtered it together.

Ghid picked up a bigger piece of the broken water glass, examining the distortions
of light through its curved surface. “You both remember your sweet little neighbor,
right? What was her name? Something with a V?”

Shay rammed his bottle to the table. “Mrs. Verona.” In every syllable, he inserted
his unspoken threat. A word against Mrs. V and the guy would have to stress about
keeping his balls whole.

“Watch where you’re treading, man,” Tait snarled. “Mrs. Verona was the closest thing
we had to a saint in our neighborhood.”

“Didn’t change the fact that she worked for the devil.”

“Fuck,” Shay rasped.

“You’re lying,” Tait accused.

Ghid lifted his gaze to Colton. “Double-check my facts, spook-boy. Pull up the woman’s
financial records, and her status as a ‘location consultant’ for his production company.”

Shay traded a significant look with his brother. “She never went anywhere,” he confessed.

“Because she had to be near the phone. If your mom ever dared to scoot out from under
Stock’s thumb, Mrs. Verona would be called.” The depths of the guy’s eyes turned from
tornado clouds into furious smoke. “Melody would’ve come home to find her two little
boys with bullets through their brains.”

Along with Tait, Shay tumbled into a fog of shock and betrayal. They sat together
in silence for a long minute, identically posed with elbows on their knees.  

“Why mess with bullets?” Tait finally grated. “She’d probably have just poisoned the
cookies.”

For once, Shay didn’t whack his brother for being a drama queen. “Why bother to bake
at all? Tossing us in the garage and turning on the car…there’s quick and painless.”

Colton, thank fuck, was still able to form a clear head around the subject. “That’s
a fine excuse through the eighteenth birthdays for these bozos,” he queried, “but
what about after that?”

Ghid turned to Dan with a steady regard. “You’re able to braid this one tighter, too,
Tex. Rewind your mind by about ten years.”

After processing that for a few seconds, Dan’s face ignited. “Cork my goddamn pistol.
That was when Verge downsized the star fleet.” His gaze, strangely matching Ghid’s
in green intensity, narrowed. “What happened?”

“What do you think?” Ghid flung. “The gang at Big Idea finally figured out we
weren’t
all dead, and tracked us to the hideout.”

“So you had to break camp again?”

“Not until after your mom struck a pure genius deal with them, giving us the green
light to move into the facility at A-fifty-one.”

Shay couldn’t figure out how to react to that. He processed the genius reference,
but the rest was lost beneath his haze of raging memories—four half-conscious, torture-filled
days’ worth. The shit churned through him as a physical force, driving him to his
feet again. “She…was the one…responsible for transplanting your asses into that hell?”

Ghid stunned them all by turning like a cornered animal. More accurately, a peeved
rhino. Fury flashed in his eyes. Shay wondered if a horn really would bust loose in
place of his nose. “She didn’t have a lot of options by that point, all right? The
feds promised us there’d be no more restraints or dissection-style tests. Mel was
still tormented about inking the contract with them, knowing she didn’t trust them
enough to leave us alone in a base that wasn’t even publically acknowledged by the
government at the time. But by that point, Stock was out of control on letting the
lies and corruption take over his life.” He paused, breathing hard, looking ready
to wrestle a fucking bear. “
I
was the one who finally begged her to sign again with the feds—after I found Stock
just a few inches away from raping her.”

“Christ,” Shay repeated.

“Goddamn fuck stick,” Tait seethed.

“Let my kneecap do a mambo on his ball sack while making sure his left eye socket
was a lovely blue to match” Ghid rejoined. “But I told Mel that if I ever caught his
naked dick near her again, they’d be adding murder to my rap sheet.”

Shay took the two steps needed to lock his stance in front of Ghid. For a long moment,
their gazes dueled. It was a hell of a lot harder than he anticipated not to yank
the guy into a fierce hug for saving Mom from Stock’s perverted attack, but he managed
to restrain the PDA. Ghid gave a little nod, conveying he understand anyway.

“So everyone picked up again,” Dan filled in. “Melody was able to sever shit with
Stock, and the feds promised you all protection inside Area Fifty-One.”

“We were sure it was for the best,” Ghid confirmed. “A lot of the buildings at the
base had been abandoned since the top secret work they did there in the fifties and
sixties.” A cynical gleam appeared in his gaze. “Despite what the world thinks, we
were the most exciting thing to arrive there in years. It’s remote and quiet and secure.”
His jaw tensed. “Which seemed like our idea of heaven.”

“But it wasn’t.” Shay lifted his head. As Ghid met his stare, he knew he’d issued
the truth. The grimness of it was stamped across Ghid’s formidable face. “So,” he
followed up, “how long was it until the torture sessions started again?”

Ghid responded with his version of a grimace. “They kept it to what they could get
away with when Mel wasn’t looking—which wasn’t very often. She practically lived in
the lab, working like a demon to find viable solutions for all of us to get on with
our lives.”

“She felt responsible.” Zoe inserted it. Her words, along with her eyes, communicated
how she related to every choice Mom had made, no matter how wrenching they’d been.

“You could say that.” Ghid’s reply was a verbal version of the dry air blowing at
the windows. “At first, she thought surgery might help correct the guys with larger
deformities, but all the shit simply regenerated. So she did her best with choices
for occupational therapy and specialized career training, with the understanding that
integrating most of us back into society wasn’t going to be a choice. With the military’s
help, she also kept tabs on Stock, knowing he’d dipped farther over to the dark side
after the botched job with Lor in Los Angeles, and might one day decide to butt heads
with the feds over property he perceived as rightfully his.” The guy’s tone gained
some somber grit. “Funny, what can happen to a regular asshole once he perceives himself
as a real martyr.”

“Feel you there,” Tait murmured. Shay added a commiserating grunt. They’d both seen
that insane light in more than one man’s eyes during missions in deserts far from
this one, watching the sky ignite with rocket fire instead of neon.

Zoe’s face crunched with confusion. “I don’t understand. If you were all prepared
for what Stock did with the plane, why did all the lab’s staff simply cooperate with
Stock’s men?”

“Because those were General Newport’s instructions to us,” Ghid revealed. “He assured
Mel there was a plan in place for everyone’s safety, that he had an ultra-elite team
on their way to make sure all the Big Idea boys made it to safe ground again.” He
shrugged, seeming genuinely puzzled himself. “Mel was actually excited. She and I
have been making lots of day trips up to the backup camp, preparing it to be a B compound
of sorts for the guys. With the feds’ blessing, full security’s been in place for
a month. Newport told us that the op would involve the SHRCs secretly boarding the
plane then taking down Stock’s guys in mid-air in order to pilot the jet to Reno.
After that, the guys would be transferred out to the compound.” He arrowed his gaze
straight into Tait with that. “Instead, we received a little surprise party, complete
with special lighting and entertainment.”

Tait hauled out his inner John McClane, unrepentant and unyielding, for the comeback.
“I could say it wasn’t intentional but I’d be lying. At the time, the mission mantra
was a capture-or-kill on Stock and all his men
before
the plane fired engines again. The choice was a need-to-know thing only, shared outside
the team by the general, the upper brass at JSOC, and of course, the Big Nick.” His
use of the military’s nickname for President Nichols didn’t go lost on Ghid or Dan,
though it took Zoe a second to catch on. That was a good thing, since T didn’t wait
to continue. “We had to assume that Shay was possibly dealing off both sides of the
intel deck, but had no idea who else might be involved, including everyone on the
facility’s staff.”

“And there was no way you could’ve known that Dr. Melanie Smythe was actually Dr.
Melody Bommer,” Shay put in.

“None at all.” T’s reply was rough and low. “Dammit.”

Shay swapped a glance with Ghid. Their silent agreement was clear. It wouldn’t benefit
anyone, least of all Tait, to tell him he’d missed seeing Mom in the hallway by a
few short minutes.

“She was gone by the time you got there anyway, T.” Shay elbowed his brother in encouragement.
“And from what I heard, she got her wish, at least for a while. Most of the Big Idea
boys were transported by ground to B camp after the raid, since a lot of the A-fifty-one
lab isn’t livable right now.”

He traded another look at Ghid with the statement.
Most of the boys
. It was accurate, since the poor guys who hadn’t made it out the door in the evacuation
were certainly the sources of the screams that chorused with his own in those halls
of horror. He almost laughed at the second half of his assertion.
Isn’t livable right now
. That was even more precise. Living wasn’t what a guy did when the lunatics took
over the asylum. Surviving was the only goal.

“Well.” Tait cleared his throat and flashed a smile. “Glad to know everything gelled
out for the best, I guess.”

“Yeah,” Ghid grunted. “Eventually.”

Tait frowned. “Eventually?”

The man’s eyes actually twinkled. “Guess you don’t remember how your mom likes to
plan shit down to the molecule. She wasn’t a happy camper when your band of merry
men changed things up.” Another sound erupted from him. Not a full grunt…probably
the Ghid version of a chuckle. “That woman can be quite a feisty little Fifi when
she wants to be.”

Shay’s brows shot up. Tait’s did, too. “Fifi, huh? You ever called her that to her
face?”

“Just came up with it. But hell, now I can’t wait to try it out.”

“Good luck with that,” Tait drawled.

“Won’t need luck.”

“Right. Just full body armor.”

“That’s sort of the point.”

“It is? Why?”

Ghid’s eyes were a damn fireworks show now. “Because she’ll get all…feisty.”

“Ohhhh, yeah.” T grinned with understanding. “I get it. Feisty. Have one of those
back home, only she does it most of the time in bikinis that drive me insane. Hell,
the first night we met, she made me strip down to my skivs and march my ass through
her garden until I—” He stopped and shuddered. “Wait. Jesus on a Ritz, dude; you’re
talking about my
mom
.”

“Oh, yeah.”

“Shut. Up.”

Shay, while pleased about their fun little bonding session, couldn’t sand the edges
of anxiety off his blood and bones. The feeling was rendered by the same blade that
sharpened him for things like HALO jumps from planes and impending shit storms with
hostiles. He was used to dealing with it for a few hours, then buffing it out with
some deep breaths and renewed focus on the horizon.

But the horizon was a blur. And every breath just brought another swipe of the knife,
cutting a deeper chasm inside, opening the way for his mind to plunge deeper. He gripped
his bottle and paced to the window, forcing himself to concentrate on the present,
to take in every shape and swirl of the electronic tapestry forming the boulevard
below.

It wasn’t working.

He still drowned in dread, and couldn’t figure out why.

Until his brother spoke again.

“Wait another damn minute. If Mom was working with our side the whole time, and we
cleared all the residents out of A-fifty-one, then who were those G-suits I signed
Shay over to? And why did they beat and torture the crap out of
him
?”

Zoe didn’t know her heart could break just by looking at someone. This moment proved
her wrong.

Her chest clutched from the agony of watching Shay as
he
watched Tait, knowing his brother was finally stringing every piece of evidence together—and
arriving at the truth at the end of that line. Tait peered at Shay with layers of
new intensity, though beyond that, Zoe couldn’t tell if the man was shocked, horrified,
confused, or all three. Clearly, Shay couldn’t discern that answer, either, and his
torment over that was hewn in every taut line of his body…every haunted, bruised line
of his face.

She yearned to go to him. To ease his anguish. But she could only sit here and hope
it was enough, her own version of a disgusting hell.

Tait finally jabbed the throbbing blister of a silence. “Shay.
Shit
. Shay.”

He took a step. Shay rushed backward by two. “Don’t,” he growled. “Just don’t, T.”

“Okay. Fine.” Tait tilted his head forward before shaking it again. “Wait. Hold on.
Why do they even suspect that
you
—”

“Little parting gift from Homez,” Shay growled. “A whole vial of the serum. I drank
it the night Mom left, thinking it was some special thing from her.”

“Big deal.” Tait spread his arms. “You were a kid. Maybe it simply…passed through
you…”

Shay made a rolling motion with one of his hands. “Keep going. You’re doing good,
broheim. It’s the same script I ran when they had me strapped down to that gurney.
I don’t look like the others, right? I’m completely normal. No scales or horns or
fins. Figured they’d test me then throw me back.” A growl, sudden and anguished and
angry, ripped out of him. “Well, they didn’t throw me back, dammit.”

“Okay.” Tait stared harder at his brother. “It’s going to be fine, okay? You’ll handle
this.
We’ll
handle this. We’ll—”

Shay gashed him short by sweeping up his beer can and hurling it against the wall.
“I don’t want to fucking
handle
this!” His steps across the room made Zoe’s heart feel like a caged animal—appropriate
for the vicious desperation in every inch of his movements, too. “You know what I
want, Tait? I want someone to cut me open from my throat to my balls, so I bleed.
And I want this monster inside of me to be drowning in every drop of that shit. And
I want lie there, watching that fucker drown and die.” He gripped the wall, his fingernails
scoring the stucco, digging out chunks of it with the force of his fury. “I don’t
want this poison
handled
, Tait. I want it
gone
.”

He disappeared down the hall.

Two seconds later, one of the bedroom doors thundered shut.

Before any of the men could stop her, Zoe rushed to her feet and ran across the room.
She bolted past the bedroom where her friends were piled on the bed watching a
Step Up
movie, to the door still trembling from the force of Shay’s slam.

She was glad he hadn’t thought to lock it—though as soon as she entered, the tic went
off in his jaw, likely damning himself for the oversight. He confirmed that with his
rancorous snarl. “Get out, Zoe. Now.”

A tremble skittered through her.
Caramba
. His rage was a force in the room, short-circuiting her in ways she’d never felt
before. Part of her understood his frustration and shared his anger. Another part
ached more deeply for him. And another part, unattached to any logical thought, gave
way to her inner cavegirl, responding in its purest form to his caveman…turning the
crux of her thighs into a pulsing puddle.

Shit, shit, shit
.

She sucked in a breath and dropped her hands to her sides, shaking them a little.
Through the next breath, she told herself she wasn’t an idiot for locking herself
in a room with a beast with hunched, heaving shoulders, arms spread, hands flattened
against the window.

How she longed to rush to him, molding her body against his back, whispering a reprise
of Tait’s pledge. It
would
be okay. They’d all help him through this, no matter what “this” ended up being like.

That was where curiosity rammed itself into the picture.

Shay had taken his “magic honey” shooter when he was nine years old. According to
what Ghid had relayed to them, the incubation period for the other test subjects hadn’t
been eighteen months, let alone eighteen years.

What had happened differently with Shay? Did the serum affect children differently
than adults? Was that part of the reason Homer slipped the vial to him?

The questions were as daunting as the power of her need to be here for him. And with
him…in any way he needed.

She scooted forward by one shaky step. Another. “That’s not a good idea,” she softly
told him.

An ominous rumble crawled its way out of him. “Right. Because the way things have
been going has been such a string of ‘good ideas’ lately.”

Crazily, that replaced her nervous chill with a hot gust of anger. “Five days ago,
you thought three hours in a hotel room with me was a pretty good idea.”

His fingers went white against the dark glass. “Dammit.”

“And another one on a hospital bed in the middle of the desert.”

“
Zoe
.”

“What?” It tore out of her at full volume and she didn’t care who heard. “
Dios mio
! Don’t you get it? Every minute, every
second
of those hours was like gold turned into time for me. Before them, I felt like an
alien on my own planet, seeking a connection that didn’t exist for me here.” So much
for breathing deeply. Or holding back the tears that had been pummeling at the base
of her throat to break free. “I’m
thankful
for every turn your life took that brought you to that airport bar…that led you to
me. And if you answer me one more time with that damn growl, I won’t settle for just
everyone in this suite knowing it. The roof is a few stairwells away,
pendejo
.”

He swung his head around, glowering at her with bloodshot eyes. “Try it and you won’t
be able to sit tomorrow.”

He meant it. Every word. And every cell in her body, sparking to new heights of terror
and need at once, adored him for it. This man…he turned her inside out. Made her insane.
Infuriated. And desperate for something that felt halfway normal again. A reality
where she could reclaim maybe a little of who she was…

Her defaults snapped into place. Anger. Attitude.

“Is this the part where my dutiful ‘Yes, Sir’ is supposed to make an appearance? Don’t
hold your breath, Sergeant. Unlike you, maybe the people down on the Strip will be
interested to know that the gift you brought to me, the hope you gave my spirit, would
take me a lifetime to repay you for. Maybe they’ll be happy to hear that when I woke
up after fainting on the plane and saw you over me, I wanted to kiss you as hard as
I beat on you.”

His glare narrowed. “You were sobbing.”

“Because I was thankful, dammit!”

“What?”

“You heard me.”

“That makes no sense.”

“Bullshit it doesn’t.” Her voice cracked. Appropriate, considering what was going
on inside her heart. “I thought I’d never see you again. So if fate used hostage ropes
to pull me back to your side, I was determined to be thankful for every last fiber
of them.”

A dark huff fell from Shay. He wearily shook his head. “You’re the craziest woman
I’ve ever met.”

“In case you haven’t noticed, crazy’s a good thing when it comes to us.” She jabbed
her chin up, wishing for heels over her flats to help with the defiant posture. At
least the flats had a little sparkle. “So if you think you’re getting rid of me, just
because you think you’re some changed creature” —she took another step, reaching out
for him— “when it’s
you
who have changed
me
…” Tentatively, she lowered her hand to his back. “You need to think again, dammit.”

“Zoe—”

“You opened me again. Filled me in so many incredible ways. I don’t know how I’ll
ever communicate—”

“
Stop
.” He left her with only the stark imprints of his hands on the window after he wrenched
away, stalking along the glass to the far side of the bed. “Stop it, Zoe. Now. Please.”

She couldn’t listen to him. She
wouldn’t
. “Shay—”

“
Dammit
, Zoe!” He wheeled back toward her, his gaze at full dagger force. “What are you going
to say? That you ‘understand’ me now? That you once felt like a mutant, so you ‘get’
everything that’s going on here? It doesn’t fucking work that way! We’re not suddenly
soul mates because of this!”

Twisting herself back from the temptation to slap his gorgeous face, she retorted,
“You’re right. We’re not soul mates—because of this.” She jutted her chin again, refusing
to let him go from the direct demand of her stare. “We were already connected, five
nights ago, because of things far more amazing than this.” A new sting pressed behind
her eyes. “Go ahead,” she rasped, blinking hard against the tears, “tell me I’m full
of shit for that now, too. It won’t change the fact that it
is
a fact!”

A roar curled out of him as he turned on her again, clawing a hand at the back of
his neck. “I can’t do this.”

Zoe snorted. “Can’t or won’t?”

As his head dipped, his hand curled tighter. “I don’t—know how. Dammit, Zoe, I just
don’t know how.”

“Because you think you have to do it alone.” She reached and pressed the button to
extinguish the bedside lamp. The movement brought her next to him, a good thing since
the sole light in the room now came from the city stretching for miles below. She
lifted her hand to his downturned jaw, her fingers sizzling from the burn of his thick
stubble. “The mission’s over, remember? You don’t have to do this by yourself anymore.”

He pushed her away, gently this time. “I’m lost, dancer. Nothing’s in control.”

A rough sigh escaped him. The wind
shoosh
ed past the window. Something with a siren wailed through the streets below.

Chaos and uncertainty outside. Darkness and shadows across the room.

Yet Zoe was suddenly clearer than she’d been in days. More sane. More completely sure
of being exactly where she was meant to be.

No. Not exactly.

She slid down until her knees met the carpet. Once there, she leaned forward, tucking
her head against his thigh.

“Then control me.”

Now
everything was right.

Or so she hoped.

Shay’s silence extended through an interminable minute. Another. In the middle of
the first, he lowered a hand to her head, sifting his fingertips through her hair,
inch by slow inch. He still made no other movement or sound.

Zoe waited.

She battled not to feel as if she searched for constellations in a starless sky. If
the midnight of this moment extended for an hour, she’d wait. She let the promise
fill her mind as she desperately, stupidly, pressed tighter to his leg. If anyone
kicked in the door and burst into the room right now, they’d get quite a laugh from
proud, self-sufficient Zoe Chestain, fawning at the feet of a man. She didn’t care.
She belonged here. Simply being here for him. Offering him…

Everything.

The sudden tension of his hand was stunning but thrilling. When he wrapped his fingers
into more of her hair then pulled, Zoe whimpered in a fusion of abrupt pain…and mounting
arousal. In an instant, her mind spiraled into an ether she couldn’t explain, let
alone control. It sucked the breath from her lungs, stopping her heart until it pounded
in her chest, begging wildly for air.

She finally pulled in a gasp as Shay rolled his hand to the back of her head, dragging
the hair he already had in his fist. He grunted hard as she cried out in full, then
again when he pulled her face up against the ridge beneath his jeans zipper.

“
Dios
.” It was all she had time to gasp before he guided her mouth up and down the flap,
the denim stretched taut from the flesh that pounded beneath. Zoe moaned, widening
her jaw, letting her mind succumb to her soul’s needs for service and submission.

“Sweet baby girl.” Shay barely added volume to the gruff yet adoring utterance. “You
do want this, don’t you?”

“Mmmm.” She sighed in place of a nod since his hold was still deliciously restrictive.
“Yes, Sir. Oh…yessss…”

He growled in harsh approval before using his free hand to twist the button of his
pants free. Zoe sighed again, inhaling the musk of his arousal and the tang of his
skin while he directed her face to the top of his magnificent bulge.

“Unzip it,” he ordered. “Use only your mouth.”

She peered up, rejoicing in the molten light that shined down on her from his gaze.
His eyes were the color of new chains, a perfect comparison to the bonds she yearned
to form with him. Shay Bommer, in his passion and fire and domination, was rapidly
ruining her for any other man. Perhaps ever.

After locking her lips around the zipper pull, she dipped her head, opening every
lock of the metal teeth until nothing barred her from his cock except his BVDs. She
couldn’t help licking her lips while beholding the strained fabric, already dark with
an oval wet spot as evidence of his hot desire.
Vaya
, how she longed to set his erection free. To lick and nibble every pulsing inch of
his huge erection…