Unleashing the Storm (31 page)

Nothing
like that had ever happened before, but she didn’t have time to dwell. Brad and
James were leading her underground and into a world that scared the bejeezus
out of her.

Tom’s
gaze burned her back, and she wondered if he’d watch until she disappeared,
which might be a long time. The hallway went on forever, the smooth walls
broken by metal doors with tiny windows. She peeked into one and immediately
wished she hadn’t.

The
rooms were chambers. Full of furniture, decorations, but still too cramped for
her comfort. Too cramped and too confining.

Cells.

“Is
this—” She swallowed and tried again. “Is this a prison?”

Brad
shook his head. “The prison is one level below. These are the trainee
quarters.”

“Are
we free to come and go?”

James
knocked on one of the doors on his way past and then waved at the man reading a
book inside. “We’ll explain everything once we get you to your room.”

“No.”
She stopped in the middle of the hallway and crossed her arms over her chest.
“You’ll tell me now.”

“Kira,”
Brad began in a soothing, low voice, “let’s not make this difficult.”

“You’re
the ones being difficult.” She backed up the hall as they moved toward her like
stalking cats. “I just want to know if you’re going to keep me locked up. I
can’t be locked up. I need—”

“We’ve
been over this. We have all angles covered.”

Idiots.
“What if you forget? Or decide to punish me by keeping your damned
donors
away? Or what if some jackass wants to know how long I can go before it’s too
late?”

James
cast a hasty glance at Brad, and she knew she’d hit the nail on the head. They
planned to test her limits. Tom had told her as much, but now that it was real…

She
spun around. Three steps later, James seized her arm and jerked her around. She
swung. Clocked him in the jaw. He fell back against the wall, but then Brad was
blocking her escape, and her feet wouldn’t move. Nothing would move. Her arms
were pinned to her sides. How were they doing this?

“Kira,
you need to calm down. We’re not going to hurt you. We’ll keep you safe and
serviced.” Brad withdrew a hypodermic needle from his shirt pocket and uncapped
it.

“Let
me go,” she shouted, because now it was too late to calm down. Images of the
jail cell kept flashing in her brain, turning the trainers into cops who wanted
to use her over and over.

Terror
ripped through her until she shook with it. Rapid, gasping breaths didn’t
provide enough air, and she grew light-headed. A scream welled in her throat,
and she let it loose, if only to get more oxygen.

“Let
her the fuck go.” Tom’s voice, a deep, guttural growl, punched through her
scream and panic. When had he come up behind Brad?

She
heard running footsteps, knew that people were on the way.

“Ender,
we can’t. You know that.”

“I
know you were planning to make her suffer, you son of a bitch.” The next thing
she knew, Tom was a blur and Brad was against the wall, Tom’s forearm across
his throat. “Go, Kira.”

Released
from the invisible bonds, she ran up the hall, gasped when Tom grabbed her hand
and dragged her to the lobby.

“Shit,”
he muttered. “Shit. I am in so much fucking trouble.”

“Tommy—”

“Don’t.
Just run.”

They
sprinted to the parking lot, and once they were safely inside Tom’s vintage
Mustang GT500, he peeled out of the lot and through the gate. Tom checked his
rearview mirror several times before he slammed his fist into the steering
wheel so hard she heard something crack.

“Dammit!”
He cursed a few more times, and then looked over at her. “This is just until
your fever is over. And then I’m taking you back there, hog-tied and over my
shoulder if I have to. Do you understand?”

“Yes,”
she said, her teeth still chattering. “Thank you, Tommy.”

He
shoved sunglasses over his eyes. “Don’t thank me. Don’t you dare thank me.”

NINETY
MILES AN HOUR ON THE DIRT ROAD that led to his house did nothing to tamp down
Ender’s anger. It boiled in his veins, seethed in his thoughts, and again he
strangled the steering wheel.

He
couldn’t even look at Kira, and she wasn’t saying anything either. Which was
good, because he could barely think over the roaring in his own brain.

She’d
panicked. He understood why, hadn’t even wanted to think again about what
happened to Kira in the jail cell, and hadn’t been able to
stop
thinking
about it.

He’d
fucking panicked too when he’d realized how they would test her limits—making
her go without sex for as long as she could handle it.
Fuck.

Inherently,
there was nothing wrong with the training and experimentation methods they’d
been planning to use on Kira, with seeing just how far someone could be pushed.
That’s what the military—and then ACRO—had taught him. It was about knowing
your limits, learning to deal with them in case of capture.

It
didn’t matter whether or not he understood the whys of the situation—her panic
was enough to send him into a white-hot rage, his protection-mode engaging full
force.

They
hadn’t seen her by the river, when she’d gone without for too long. And he
didn’t have the time or the patience to explain it to them. Instead, he’d done
what he’d been doing for days now—he kept her out of harm’s way.

“Tommy…”

“What?”
he barked, and Kira just pointed to his ringing phone. “Shit.” He used one
finger to open the flip phone, only to bark, “What?” into the receiver.

“What
the fuck are you doing?”

“Don’t
start with me, SEAL.”

Remy
ignored him. “Christ, Ender, you nearly killed two trainers. You’d better haul
your ass in here.”

“I
don’t need you to tell me what to do,” he growled.

“But
you will listen to me,” Dev’s voice rang on the other end of the line. Ender
drew a deep breath and closed the phone as he pulled into his driveway.

“Let’s
go.” He got out of the car and strode into his house and she followed him
inside. He turned on her suddenly. “Did they hurt you?”

“What?
No, they didn’t—”

“Are
you sure?”

She
cocked her head and looked at him and he had a sudden urge to cover himself up.
He had to check to make sure he was fully clothed, and then he realized that
she was seeing right through him. And for some reason, she liked what she saw.

He
picked her up by the waist and carried her to the bedroom and then the bed. By
his calculations, she had three more hours until she needed her next mating.
He’d have everything figured out before that.

But
for now, he grabbed her arms before she could resist and he locked them to the
headboard with the leather wrist cuffs he usually reserved for play.

“Tommy,
you can’t do this.”

“I
won’t leave you for long. I have to go back to ACRO and deal with this mess
you’ve created.”

“
I’ve
created?” She started to struggle and he recognized the panic rising and
falling in her chest. He pushed the phone within reach and wrote down the
number to his cell.

“I’ll
be back before you need me.”

“I
don’t understand this. Or you. You cared enough about me to get me out of that
place and then you do something like this.”

And
that right there was enough to give him that final push over the edge of
sanity. “Don’t you get it? I don’t care about you, Kira. I can’t care about
you.”

“Right.
I’m just a job. You’ve made that perfectly clear,” she said. And then she
turned her head away from him, mustered as much dignity as she could, and he
forced himself out the door without a backward glance in her direction.

Dev
sent Remy away, because he knew Ender’s next move. Ender would come in and take
his reprimand like a man, growl and then attempt to kill a few more people on
the way out.

Dev
wasn’t sure why that made him smile, but it did. He prepared himself for
Ender’s visit—had to be careful not to let on that his sight was completely
restored. He and Oz had decided that, until the mole was caught, it was better
to let everyone think it was business as usual at ACRO. Which meant no sight
for Dev.

He’d
expected that his other senses would lessen, that some sensory perceptions
wouldn’t feel as heightened as they once had. But the opposite seemed to be
true. And when that son of a bitch burst into his office without knocking, Dev
sensed something he never, ever got from Ender.

Fear.

“You’re
back,” Dev said, and just because Ender was in pain didn’t mean Dev was going
to go easy on him. And that pain was even more apparent now that Dev could see
the man in full Technicolor and not the muted visions of his CRV.

“Yes.”
Ender stood in front of him defiantly, his eyes blazing with anger that didn’t
hide the worry. At least not well enough.

“I
hear you’re refusing to bring your acquisition back in. I hear that you haven’t
followed one goddamned order I’ve given you. I hear that the animal whisperer
hasn’t even agreed to join. Which means she should be dead.”

“Her
name’s Kira. And she’ll join.”

Dev
nodded, slowly. It had happened just the way he’d figured. “You can’t be sure
of that.”

“She
can’t be sure of anything until her heat cycle’s over, Dev. She needs sex every
four hours.”

“We
have men who can service her safely. Humanely. No one’s going to hurt her here.
Bring her in.”

“I
won’t do that.”

“You
don’t have a choice; I’m giving you an order. She’s still vulnerable, even if
she is with you. They’re after her.”

“She
doesn’t want other men. She picked me.”

“What
do you mean, she’s picked you?”

“I
don’t know—something about picking a mate when she’s in her heat cycle,” Ender
said.

Dev
turned and walked toward his desk, focusing on Kira’s mind while he did so. He
got a fleeting mental image of Kira on a bed with a dark gray comforter, saw
restraints on her wrists and, despite that, felt Kira’s thoughts about Ender.

This
was the first time she’d ever picked one mate. Normally, she needed several.
And even though she was pissed to hell at him at the moment, she loved him. And
that was enough to soften Dev. For the moment.

“Fine.
You can continue to be her mate, Ender. But you’ll do so here. So we can
observe her and figure out the best way to ease her transition.”

When
Ender finally spoke again, his voice was quiet but firm. “I won’t do it, Dev.
Do you have any idea what they were planning to do to her at the training
facility? I’ll keep her safe until her heat cycle’s over and then I’ll bring
her in.”

“And
suppose it’s too late by then? She’s dangerous and you know it.”

“As
dangerous as Remy was, but you didn’t think about putting him down unless there
was no other choice. Why are you so quick to off Kira?”

“Remy
had military training and a power that he alone could control. It would have
taken time for an enemy to break him, get him to work for them, if they could
do that at all.” Dev ran his fingers through his hair, hated to hear Ender
calling her by name. “In the wrong hands—or even in the right ones—the animal
whisperer is potentially a weapon of mass biological destruction. Itor wouldn’t
need her consent to use her, they only need her body. You know that as well as
I do. Tell me, if she refuses to join, are you going to be able to kill her?”

“It
won’t be the first time I’ve had to fuck a woman and then kill her. All part of
the job, right, Dev?”

“You
didn’t answer my question.”

“It’s
something you shouldn’t have asked. And why are your nightmares back?” Ender
asked.

“I
could ask you the same question,” he said, heard Ender’s sharp intake of breath
and saw a man who claimed to call nobody friend with his hands fisted in his
jeans pockets pretending not to give a shit. “You still underestimate me. Just
because I can’t break into your mind doesn’t mean Kira’s isn’t wide open to me.
She’s concerned about you.”

Ender
was silent for a long minute, and then his tension, his realization filled the
room. “This is about Oz, isn’t it? You always get the nightmares when he comes
back into your life. I’ll kill the motherfucker.”

“You’ll
finish your own goddamned assignment, stop lying to me and figure out a way to
bring Kira into ACRO. It’ll be the only way to break this bond you’ve formed
with her.”

KIRA
WAS WHERE HE’D LEFT HER. Ender noted that her eyes were slightly red-rimmed,
like she’d been crying. Now all he saw was anger in her eyes, and all of it
directed at him.

“I’ve
worked it out with Dev,” he said. “You can stay here with me until your heat is
over.”