“About our relationship.”
“We don’t have one.”
“But I’d like for us to.”
Anna gaped at him. “We just met!”
He stared at her blankly for a moment and grimaced. “This isn’t what you apparently think, Anna. Please! Sit down.”
Embarrassed to think she might have jumped to the wrong conclusion, Anna reddened, but she wasn’t convinced enough to sit down on the couch with him. “I’m fine. I’m a little tired of sitting, actually.”
He released an irritated breath. “I’m your patron, Anna. I also happen to be your father.”
* * * *
The unthinkable had happened. Miles Cavendish had dropped a bombshell on Anna that had totally disrupted her focus. He’d torn apart the very fabric of her life by telling her that her entire life had been a lie. She wasn’t certain an actual bomb could have so completely traumatized her.
The shock itself was almost as debilitating. She’d never in her life had trouble concentrating. If anything, she’d been accused of too much focus, tunnel vision that blocked everything out except whatever it was she was centered on. To find herself suddenly without the ability to concentrate threw her even more off-kilter, as if she’d lost a vital part of her body and was trying to learn to cope with it. Try though she might to find her inner strength, though, she hadn’t managed to block out the many things disturbing her for more than a handful of minutes at the time since the night she’d met Miles Cavendish.
She couldn’t even sleep! If she managed to beat her thoughts back during the day enough to go through the motions of carrying on her research, at night when she lay down total chaos erupted in her mind. Random thoughts seemed to pelt her and lead her in first one direction and then another in an endless round of tug-of-war—everywhere except to composure and sleep.
Releasing a pent up breath of annoyance, Anna threw her covers off and rolled out of her bed. Food, she decided, would help her achieve her goal—sleep. She needed to find something pleasurable enough to keep her focus and filled with enough drugging elements to knock her out. High fat, she decided as she made her way down the hall toward the kitchen. Milk had sleep inducing properties.
Moving to the cooling unit, she opened the door and stood staring a little blankly at the nearly empty interior, wondering when she’d last ordered a grocery delivery. Of course, she never ordered much. For one thing, food was rationed. For another, it was damned expensive and she had to keep costs down and focus her spending on her project.
Which her ‘father’ had been paying for all along!
Squeezing her eyes closed, she forced the thought to the back of her mind. She tried. When that didn’t work, she started humming a tune, forcing her mind to focus on the tune rather than the thoughts battering to get inside.
Unfortunately, she couldn’t really think of any damned songs except the childhood songs her mother had taught her and they were too simple to help her keep focused. “Old MacDonald had a farm ….”
She picked up the container of milk and examined the expiration date. “Had sour milk because his cow had expired ….” She opened it and sniffed just to be sure. “Oh my god! I could make cheese with that! Ok, milk’s out. Fattening, fattening ….”
The take out boxes were empty, she discovered, wondering why she’d emptied them and left them inside the unit. “Old MacDonald had a farm, e-eye, e-eye, O!” she sang, pitching the containers over her shoulder in the general direction of the trash bin.
“And on that farm he had wrinkly tomatoes and withered lettuce, something unidentifiable and a black, hairy moldy thing! E-eye, e-eye … fuck!”
Slamming the door of the unit, she turned to head to her cabinets to check those for something that might appeal to her. It took her eyes a few moments to adjust from the brightness of the cooler to the darkness of the kitchen, several critical moments for her eyes to discern that there was a big, black, impenetrable shadow between her and her objective. The split second she realized that the dark shape was roughly the size and shape of a very large man, she screamed.
Something brushed her arm—a hand—and she screamed again, whirling to flee.
She slammed into the wall before she’d taken more than two leaps of fright. Stunned by the impact and the discovery that the wall was a lot closer than it should have been, the man she’d slammed into had coiled his arms around her before she’d gathered her wits.
Screaming again, she dropped all of her weight against his arms and slithered halfway through the lose coil before he realized what she was doing and tightened his arms, pinning her face against something soft and squishy. It hardened while she was huffing and puffing out muffled screams against it, flailing her arms and legs wildly and gyrating her body to try to get loose.
“Grab her god damn it!” the man above her bellowed.
She sensed the presence of a second man and then a third as they surrounded her moments before she felt them grabbing at her. The man holding her head released her abruptly. For a handful of seconds, she managed to keep her arms free. She surged upward when the man holding her let go. Someone grabbed her around the hips. She slapped at his head and shoulders, heaving against him to try to break his hold and then someone grabbed her from behind, manacling her arms to her sides. A hand nearly as big as her face clamped over her mouth and nose. A fresh wave of panic swept over her when she sucked in her breath and found her mouth and nose passages blocked by the hand. She sank her teeth into the heel of the hand over her mouth and sucked in a sharp breath when he yanked his hand back with a hiss of pain.
“Don’t cover my face! I can’t breathe!” she exclaimed in a frantic gasp, twisting her head back and forth to prevent the man from covering her face again.
He hesitated.
“Gag her,” the man in front of her said grimly. “She’ll start screaming again the moment we get her out of the house.
“I won’t!” Anna said pleadingly. “I swear! What do you want? What are you doing in my house?”
“Your father,” the man who’d spoken before growled angrily. “You’re going to lead us to him.”
Shock went through her. She stilled, but her mind was churning. Miles Cavendish? She hadn’t even accepted that he actually was her father and now, within the space of a week, she’d met a man claiming to be the man she’d thought long dead and a dangerous gang of men wanting to get to him through her?
“I’ll take you to him!” she volunteered. “I know where he is!”
“Just like that?”
Anna nodded vigorously, ignoring the twinge of guilt that stung her. Why should she die for a man she didn’t even know, though? Whatever he’d done, she certainly hadn’t had any part in it!
The man moved away. A few moments later, the kitchen light came on, blinding her. She clamped her eyes closed instinctively the moment the glaring light hit her pupils and then squinted to see. Another jolt went through her. There were four men standing around her and not one of them had on a stitch of clothing!
Her eyes widened as the shock of discovery went through her. The light glistened on their skin. Sweat from wrestling with her? Or water?
The man standing by the light switch, the one she realized had been issuing all of the orders, was exceptionally tall—over six feet, she was sure—and broad shouldered.
His black hair hung around his shoulders in damp, faintly curling locks that ended just at the tops of his bulging male breasts. Wedge shaped muscles formed blocks all the way down his belly to the light nest of black hair that cupped his genitals. He was still semi-erect, leaving her in no doubt of where her face had been.
Even as heat began to creep into her cheeks, she registered something that made the blood rush from her face.
His skin from just below the waist to his feet was patterned—not smooth and even as the rest of his skin. It almost looked like a tattoo—except she knew it wasn’t even before she caught a glimpse at the feathery looking fins at his wrists and elbows and his ankles. Her gaze swept upward to his face again of its own accord and then, with barely time to actually register his features, moved from him to the other men within her view.
She couldn’t see the one holding her, but she could feel the hard ridges of his flesh digging into her through her thin nightgown and knew he was the same.
They were all tall, with hard, elegantly delineated muscles that gave them the grace and beauty of sculptures depicting the perfect male body rather than the appearance of actual, flawed human beings.
Because they weren’t human beings at all.
“Mutants,” Anna breathed in shock, scarcely realizing she’d spoken aloud until she saw their handsome faces freeze and harden.
The man she was staring at glanced toward the one she’d realized must be their leader and her gaze automatically followed the movement.
She had the impression that he’d been studying her with equal thoroughness while she’d looked at them. It was hard to say what he’d thought of his assessment, though, because, clearly, she’d managed to insult and anger all of them.
“She either isn’t very bright,” he said coolly, “or she has some sort of false sense of superiority that not being a ‘mutant’ somehow protects her from the consequences of pissing off men who aren’t in a very forgiving mood at the moment.”
Anna swallowed convulsively several times, blushing at the insult, struggling to think of a response. “I’m not very bright,” she agreed shakily. “Could I … uh … just give you directions?”
He narrowed his eyes at her. “And apparently, she doesn’t think we’re very bright either,” he said dryly.
Irritation flickered through her. “I’m not deaf! I do understand English, although I have to say
yours
is damned hard to understand!”
He moved toward her, bending down and pushing his face close to hers. “It comes from being a water breather,” he growled, enunciating each word slowly, and then added. “Born one.”
Her eyes widened.
He lifted a hand and skimmed a finger lightly along her cheek. “Yes, we breed .
Is that why your father decided to step things up? He figured if he didn’t start blowing us up there’d be too many to kill all of us?”
If he’d punched her in the stomach he couldn’t have more surely jolted her or deprived her of air or sent her mind into complete chaos. She felt dizzy with the rush of blood away from her head. “Blow up?” she managed to whisper through lips that didn’t seem to want to cooperate in forming the words.
“Simon! We need to move!”
Simon straightened and turned to look at the man who’d spoken. They seemed to exchange a silent communication and the one named Simon turned to look at her again.
This time his expression was speculative. “Take us to him. Mind you, if this is a trap, you won’t live long enough to regret it.”
* * * *
Anna stared in disbelief at the spot where the mansion of Miles Cavendish had been moored less than a week earlier. After turning all the way around and studying the houses, though, she finally had to accept that
she
was in the right place. The
house
wasn’t.
That was the problem with a floating city, she thought fearfully. There was never any telling when someone might decide to move their property to another city altogether!
She sent a terrified look at Simon. “It was right here! I swear to god! Don’t hurt me! It
was
here!”
His face looked like stone. “When?”
Anna blinked at him, trying to jog her memory. “A few days ago! I’m not sure.
Paul brought me. There was a party and … and I met Miles Cavendish.”
“No doubt celebrating their victory!” Simon spat in furious disgust. “Two hundred people dead! Two hundred! Fifty of them ‘human’, just like you, tourists whose only mistake was getting in the way! Another three hundred wounded, a lot of them fucked up for life!”
Anna gaped at him, thinking for several moments that she might throw up.
“Met?” one demanded sharply.
She looked at him, vaguely recalled Simon calling him by name—something Biblical? Caleb!
“What do you mean ‘met’?” Simon growled.
Anna returned her attention to Simon. “Paul brought me here! Mr. Cavendish said he’d asked him to so he could meet me! He wanted me to join him, told me he was my father,” she babbled. “I swear to god I hadn’t met him before that! I don’t even believe he
is
my father! Mom said my father died before I was born. So, if Paul or somebody told you he was, they were lying! I don’t even know the guy!”
“Who the fuck is Paul?”
Anna blinked at him again. “My assistant—Paul Warner.”
“Where is he?”
“We need to take her to the Watch Center to interrogate her,” one of the men said.
“We’re liable to attract company we don’t want here!”
“We could go back to my place!” Anna volunteered, immediately certain she had no desire to be taken anywhere else, adding in a small voice when Simon glared at her, “Couldn’t we?” And then she could tell them everything she knew, which shouldn’t take more than five minutes, and they could go away again!
Simon looked like he wanted to bite nails in two and could’ve done it. He uttered a growl of pure frustration. “The bastard’s probably already slipped through our fingers,” he muttered. “Snakes!”
“He isn’t mine!” Anna gasped. “Swear! I’ve only known him a few weeks, and Cavendish told me he’d sent him.” Her chin wobbled. “I don’t know what’s going on here! I’m just a scientist! I genetically engineer plants! And I’m really bad at it, too!
Everybody calls them franken-veggies! I’m sure I’m absolutely useless to you, so you might as well just let me go! I won’t tell anybody! I have a bad memory for faces and names!”
She didn’t realize the men had turned away from the city and begun tugging her out to sea until Simon abruptly dipped her head beneath the water. She came up coughing and spluttering and swinging her arms wildly.
“God damn it, Simon! Was that really necessary?”
“It shut her up, didn’t it?” Simon growled.
“We need a suit to take her down,” one of the others said.
“I’ll breathe for her.”
“Aw, come on, Simon! Lighten up! It’ll scare the ever loving shit out of her!”
“If you can’t keep your mind off of your dick, stay out of it!”
“Oh yeah? Well maybe it’s you that can’t keep your mind off your dick! I wasn’t the one that suggested I’d breathe for her!”
“You’re both scaring the piss out of her! Keep a lid on it!”
Anna was shaking like a leaf, but she was hardly aware of the conversation going on around her. Her entire focus was on the fact that they seemed determined to take her below and her phobia of heights—which included depths! As tempted as she was to plead her case further, the dunking had taken what little spine she had and beyond that, she wasn’t sure she could get her mouth, tongue, and vocal chords to cooperate. Her heart seemed to stop in her chest when Simon turned her to face him and she knew he was about to take her far below the surface.
She didn’t
have
gills! She couldn’t sift the oxygen from the water! She was going to drown!
He slapped her cheek lightly. “Focus, Anna! I’m going to breathe for you while I take you down!”
She nodded jerkily, but it was an instinctive urge to agree with anything he said, not actual comprehension. She whipped her head to the side the moment he ducked beneath the surface with her, holding her breath. He waited until she began to fight him frantically and tightened his grip around her. She would’ve continued to try to elude his mouth if he hadn’t tangled his hand in her hair and held her head.
She continued to claw at him in mindless terror for several moments after she felt his heated breath in her mouth and sucked it into her starving lungs. He touched her nose. She was at a loss to grasp why until it occurred to her that he was telling her to breathe out through her nose.
The panic never really left her. She simply wore herself out fighting him and went limp, her entire focus on sucking in each breath he gave her and waiting anxiously for the next.