I gasped, feeling an invisible weight pressing down on me.
“Enough!” Price grabbed Touray by his collar and spun him away. He planted a hand in his brother’s back and shoved him hard. “Get. Out. Now.” The ferocity in his voice promised anything short of complete cooperation would be met with violence.
“You, too,” Price said, hooking his hand under Leo’s arm and dragging him to his feet. “You can talk to her later, when she’s rested.”
Leo, entirely unaware of the danger, or else having a death wish, jerked out of Price’s grip and shoved the other man back. “That’s my sister, buddy. I’m not going anywhere.”
Price practically purred. “But you are. Feet first if necessary.”
Leo snorted. “I’d like to see you try.”
Time for me to intervene. I attempted to clear my throat loudly, and that quickly turned into ragged coughing. That’s when I realized I was parched. My bones felt like kindling, and my tongue was leather. Price leaped to my side, sitting down on the edge of my bed and pulling me up against him. He tipped my head onto his shoulder and stroked my back.
“Shhhh,” he crooned, “I’ve got you, baby. Easy now. Just breathe.”
I melted against him. I didn’t really have a choice. Once the coughing settled, I didn’t have the strength to do anything else.
This was ridiculous. I mean, sure, I conked my head a couple of times and I hadn’t eaten for a while, but I shouldn’t be pancaked like this. “What’s wrong with me?” I murmured into Price’s shirt. Black, per his usual. Wouldn’t want any maverick color sneaking into his closet. He and Dalton apparently shopped in the same stores. “Why am I so weak?”
“It’s spirit-sag. Happens when a body and soul are separated too long,” Price said, running his hand over my hair.
How long was too long?
Leo anticipated my question. “You were lost for twenty-seven hours.”
Twenty-seven? It hadn’t felt like that long. I wrinkled my nose. “That doesn’t seem so bad.”
Price’s arms tightened convulsively. “Much longer, and your body would have quit on you. You’d almost stopped breathing.”
Oh. That was bad. Yes, I’m really good with the obvious. “Sorry,” I muttered, because I didn’t know what else to say.
His chest jerked at he laughed. A harsh bark. “Wasn’t your fault.”
“You won’t say that when I tell you everything,” I muttered. He has bat ears.
“What?” He pushed my head up so that he could look at me. His black brows slashed together, and his eyes blazed. “What did you do?”
“I got a little bit kidnapped.” I hunched into myself, waiting for him to explode.
He only gave a restrained scowl. “Yes, Leo mentioned that.”
Speaking of Leo, he stood at the foot of the bed, staring at me, arms folded, face forbidding. He saw me looking back at him and flicked a glance at Price, lifting his brows meaningfully.
Oh. Right. That. If Price having kissed me didn’t clue him in, me snuggling up to the man no doubt demonstrated my woeful lack of self-preservation. I gave a weak smile. “I take it the two of you have met?”
The two men exchanged a smoky look.
“We did,” Leo said, his upper lip curling. “Once his brother took the gun out of my face.”
Oops. I’d forgotten. I grimaced. “Sorry.”
“We’ll talk about it later.” His grin promised that I would be getting an earful. He looked again at Price. “It seems you left one or two things out when you told me about your adventures to recover Josh.”
“That’s because my love life is none of your business.”
“Love life?”
“Price is—” What? My boyfriend? That sounded like I was about fourteen. Lover? I wasn’t ready to announce that. “He’s my date for dinner at Mel’s.” That should pretty much get the point across. I’d never, ever, taken a date to Mel’s.
Leo blinked, and then his expression fractured into merriment. He laughed long enough to be irritating. Finally, he wiped the corners of his eyes. “This is going to be the best dinner ever. I can hardly wait.”
I scowled. “I don’t see what’s so funny.”
“Of course not,” Leo said. “The sacrificial lamb never does.”
Before I could answer, someone knocked on the door. Without waiting for an answer, Touray strode in carrying a mug. Soup. It smelled heavenly. He handed it to me. I fumbled it, and Price took it from me.
“You’ll need calories to recover, and sleep. Your body’s been healed, but a tinker can’t do anything about the backlash from a body/soul separation. Because you were split for so long, it will take a few days to recuperate. You’ll be dizzy and tired and your muscles will be rubber,” Touray said as Price held the cup to my lips.
Chicken noodle soup. Luckily, it was only lukewarm, because I put my hands over Price’s and gulped it down in three swallows. It was possibly the best thing I’d ever tasted in my life. Warmth ran down my throat to my belly and leached out into the rest of me. I licked my lips. “More?” I asked plaintively.
Touray made an exasperated sound and snatched the cup back. He marched out without a word.
Price chuckled, his chest rumbling. “He’ll regret serving you when he finds out how much you can eat.”
I smiled, grateful for a joke to lighten the mood. “He will, won’t he?”
Touray seemed to have learned a lesson, though, because this time he returned with the mug and an insulated pitcher full to the brim. Under his arm was a roll of whole-grain crackers flavored with herbs. He set them down on marble-topped nightstand beside my bed. He poured some soup and held out the mug, then watched me drink.
His eyes were hooded, and I could almost hear his brain whirling with questions and no little fury. I’d endangered myself, and he wasn’t at all happy about it. To him I was an irreplaceable commodity. Then someone had stolen me in dreamspace, and when I get back, out of the blue I tell him I don’t think he murdered my mom. He probably wanted to wring me like a sponge to get answers.
Price, on the other hand, was going to flip out when he found out that Percy had burned me with cigarettes and fumigated me. Stir in the fact that he was harvesting innocent people for Sparkle Dust—I could imagine Price storming into the mountain to take Percy down all by himself and damn everything else. Touray wasn’t exactly a cool head, but he seemed to be far more calculating than emotional. Hopefully, he could help rein his brother in from a suicide mission.
While everybody watched me, I drank three more mugs of soup and ate half a sleeve of the crackers. When I was done, I could feel energy sparking back into my body, and my head wasn’t so foggy.
Price took the mug and set it down on the nightstand, then settled me back down on the pillows.
“I’ll leave you alone to rest, then,” Touray said and headed for the door. Leo hesitated. I waved at him, and he nodded, then followed.
I squirmed into a more comfortable position against the pillows. That’s when I noticed I was wearing one of Price’s shirts and some lacy underwear I didn’t recognize. I scowled. “Please tell me you did not dress me in underwear that your girlfriend left behind on her last sleepover.”
Just the thought of Price wanting someone else made my heart cramp. I fisted my hands on the feather comforter he pulled over me.
“What girlfriend?”
“You tell me.”
He glared at me. “For your information, that underwear came out of a package. I sent someone to get it. I figured you’d want something clean if . . . when you woke up.”
On the last, his voice ground to a halt in gravel. I stared at him.
“I’m sorry,” I said, averting my eyes and hunching down into myself.
“You’re damned right you are,” he said. He stood near the foot of the bed, arms crossed, feet braced.
He didn’t say anything else, just stared down at me, his upper lip curled, the lines of his body taut. His jaw knotted. After a long minute of that, I started to twitch.
“Well? Are you just going to stand there?”
“You’re right. I’ve been awake since we hauled your corpse in here. I need some sleep.” He turned on his heel and headed for the door.
I struggled to sit up. Lethargy weighted me down like stones in a pond, but his walking out on me hit me like a cattle prod to the ass. “Alone?”
“I sure as hell won’t be curling up with the imaginary girlfriend you’ve got me playing house with.”
He was punch-the-wall pissed. I tried not to smile and totally failed. I probably looked like the cat that ate the canary.
“You think that’s funny?”
He stalked back to the bed, looming over me, and while I’m sure he meant to be intimidating, I was delighted by his outburst. But pushing pins into him wouldn’t get me what I wanted.
“I apologize. I was jealous,” I confessed, my cheeks flushing. It was still so very hard to admit my feelings to him.
The bed sank as he knelt beside me and caught my face between his hands. He tipped my head so that he could look into my eyes. His had darkened, glittering like moonlit waves. In their depths, I could see the tangled currents of his hard-held emotions.
“If I had, for even a single inconceivable second, thought that I wasn’t in love with you anymore, nearly losing you again—” He broke off, clenching his jaw until I could hear his teeth grinding together. A shadow rippled across his face. His grip tightened, and he pulled me closer until his forehead pressed against mine. “If you’d died, it would have been the end of me,” he whispered raggedly.
His words stabbed me through the heart. Tears burned in my eyes, and my throat knotted.
His chest bellowed as he sucked in a harsh breath. “I’m done waiting, Riley. I’m done letting you walk around like you’re safe out there. You need a keeper. Fuck that, you need to be kept. You’re
mine
. I’ll help you do whatever you need to do, but I won’t be cut out of your life again. Do you understand?”
I licked my lips, my heart pounding. What a Neanderthal. Yet I loved every word, the desperate catch in his voice, the way his hands shook even as he handed down his imperial orders. His whole body was braced, like a fighter waiting for the first punch. It was the fighter image that jarred something loose within me. In my life, the two most important people, my mother and my father, had left me. And it meant something to me that Price would be willing to fight like hell to stay in my life. I believed him, and that made another brick in my protective walls go tumbling down.
I toyed with the edge of the comforter. “I can’t tell. Does that mean you’re still going to go pout by yourself? Or that you’re planning to stay here with me?” I looked up at him from beneath my lashes. Yeah, I was flirting. Not all that well, and Price only glowered harder at me, his mouth tightening into a thin, white line. He said nothing.
“I
did
ask you out on a date,” I pointed out. The circumstances of that text came rushing back to me. “You know, you’ve got balls calling me out on getting into trouble.
You
haven’t exactly been Mr. Safety. You nearly got blown up. At your brother’s house, which was supposed to be so impregnable. Hell, should I be worried there’s TNT in the toilet? C-4 in my shoes?” I managed to sit up straight by bracing my hands on either side of myself and shoving forward. “Don’t go getting all high and mighty and calling my kettle black, Mr. Pot. You’ve been no safer than I have.”
“You
texted
me for a date,” he said, as if that was the only thing that mattered. “You can call for a pizza delivery, but you can’t be bothered to actually call me.”
I flopped back onto the pillows again. My eyelids were getting heavy. “Sorry. Next time I’ll have my secretary call yours. We’ll do lunch.” I couldn’t summon the sarcasm the last line needed, but hopefully he got the point. I burrowed farther down under the covers and heaved a sigh. A real bed. Soft and oh, so comfortable.
The covers drew back, and a rush of air chilled my back and legs. I murmured a protest. The mattress sank, and Price snuggled up behind me, wrapping a hard arm around my ribs and draping his thigh over mine. He pulled the covers back up around us.
“We are not done with this conversation,” he said.
I laced my fingers through his as he wriggled his right arm under me and pulled me tight against his chest.
“Yeah, we are,” I said.
“Not a chance, Riley. We’re having it out.”
I smiled as I felt myself sinking into sleep. I yawned hard, my jaw cracking. It took all the effort I could muster to have the last word. “I know,” I said, loosening my fingers from his and patting his hand. “But when you find out the rest of the story, you’ll be far too pissed to come back to this.” Whatever
this
was. I wasn’t entirely clear.
He might have said something else, but I didn’t hear. I’d already fallen asleep.
Chapter 12
What woke me was a combination of the need to pee and my skin’s prickling awareness of Price curled around me. I’d been too tired to get turned on before, but all of a sudden, heat pooled in my stomach, and my breasts ached with the need to have Price touching them. To have him lick and suck and—
I groaned. Talk about bad timing. What was my body thinking, anyway? I’d been tortured, imprisoned, and then separated from my body. You’d think sex would be the last thing I wanted.
Deciding a cold shower was in order, I edged toward the side of the bed. Sex wasn’t on the agenda. Even if Price wasn’t still pissed, there was always the issue of Percy and Madison’s family. Indulging my libido would be selfish. Not to mention I didn’t know when Leo or Touray would bust in to wake us up. That thought doused my desire better than any shower. I did not need either of our brothers critiquing our performance.
I’d almost made good my escape to the shower, when Price woke up.
“Where are you going?” he asked, pulling me onto my back and lifting himself over me.
His hips still rested on the bed, but he caged me between his arms, his chest brushing against mine. My nipples hardened into peaks. I clenched my thighs together as an ache burst to throbbing life between them. Price’s eyes were sleepy, his hair tousled. I’ve never seen a more beautiful man. I reached up and smoothed the long locks out of his face. They fell back down. He twisted his head and pressed a kiss into the palm of my hand. His tongue flicked my skin, and my whole body reacted. Tingling swarms ran over me in waves. I pulled my hand away and balled it into a fist.
“You shouldn’t,” I gasped.
“Shouldn’t what?” he asked with a pirate smile. He bent to nibble down along the side of my neck.
I made a whimpering sound and arched my back, twisting my head to give him access. He chuckled and nipped me, then lifted his head.
“Something bothering you?” He nibbled down the other side of my neck, then across my throat and down. The scrape of his beard stubble sent chills down to my toes. I curled them tight as I put my hands on his shoulders and gripped his shirt in my fists.
“I thought you were mad at me,” I said breathlessly. How could I feel this good with just a few kisses? And after a near-death experience? Another one, that is. Was I insane?
Apparently so, because instead of pushing him away, I tried to pull him closer. He didn’t budge, but neither did he stop kissing me. His tongue slipped down into the cleft between my breasts, and I shuddered. He laughed again. Fucker. He liked torturing me. I liked it, too. So, so, so
very
much.
He licked between my breasts again. “I
am
mad,” he said huskily. “You have no idea. But given the choice between having my guts tied in knots and my head shooting off like a rocket versus this”—he paused to nibble up my neck—“I decided to enjoy myself a little.”
“Logical,” I said. Gasped really. With some squirming and maybe some panting. Definitely panting.
As much as I wanted to take this further, nature wouldn’t wait. My bladder was about to explode. I grimaced. “Can you hold that thought? I really have to go use the bathroom.”
He bent and gave a quick, hot suck on my right breast, then flopped away onto his back. I lay there, my head spinning with the rush of sensation from that one small caress.
He lifted back up on his elbow, looking down at me. “Well?”
“I’m not sure I can move.”
“I’d rather you didn’t wet the bed.” He nudged my hip with his knee. “Get your ass up.”
I rolled over and sat up, swinging my feet to the floor. I looked back at him. “Touray says I need sleep, but I’ve got a feeling unless I go home, I’m not getting any. Not with you around.” I leered at him. The way he made me feel, I didn’t want rest. In fact, I was pretty sure that a little attention from Doctor Price was all I needed to feel better than new. A wash of heat swept over me as my imagination took that thought in all its possible directions at one time. I fled to the bathroom before I went up in smoke.
Once inside, I eyed the shower longingly, then decided Price wasn’t going to wait for me to get clean. On the other hand, I could see if he wanted a shower . . . I shivered. We could have both the bed
and
the shower.
I used the toilet and washed my hands and face, then examined myself in the mirror. Aside from the orangey-red rat’s nest my hair had become, I didn’t look that bad. All my wounds had been healed while I was zonked out. At least I didn’t look scary, though my teeth were a little furry and my breath was probably rank.
My stomach growled. I glanced down at it and noticed the exhausted amethyst heal-all pendant still hanging around my neck. I jerked it over my head and dropped it into the trash. Empty of its magic, it was now only a pretty necklace. As grateful as I was for its healing, it was a reminder that I’d let potential enemies get too close to me, and far too close to the people I cared about.
I didn’t want to leave Price waiting any longer, so I rinsed my mouth out with a cup on the sink and returned to the bedroom. Only he wasn’t on the bed. He’d changed his shirt and pants and was buckling his belt. He’d put on a black cashmere polo shirt and black jeans, both of which clung to his body like a second skin. My fingers itched to trace the ridges and planes of his muscles. I sighed quietly and leaned against the bathroom doorjamb, watching him. If I’d known my going to the bathroom would screw the mood, I’d have risked wetting the bed.
He moved like a hunting cat, lithe and powerful. He pulled open the bottom drawer of the highboy cherry dresser beside the closet and lifted out a shoulder holster. He strapped it on and picked his gun up off the end of the bed. He must have had it under the pillows. He checked to make sure a bullet was chambered and the magazine was full. Because apparently the tooth fairy steals bullets when she find guns instead of teeth under the pillows.
After he was done getting dressed, he turned to look at me. My heart iced. His face was a blank mask, but his eyes seethed.
“I guess you decided to go with having your head shooting off like a rocket,” I noted when his imitation of a museum statue started to get on my nerves. “You may as well lay it out for me. I don’t read minds and while I know full well why you’re
going
to be pissed at me, don’t know what your damage is right now.”
His brows rose. “You don’t know,” he repeated slowly.
“That’s right.”
He made a sound of disgust and shook his head. “You fucking-well should know, after that comment you made.”
I scrambled to remember what I said when I got up. Something about him not letting me rest. I so didn’t see what the problem was. “Enlighten me.”
He flung himself down into one of the two blue wingback chairs in the little seating area on the other side of the bed by a bay window. He slouched down so that he could tip his head back and watch me from between slitted lids, his long eyelashes hiding the furious glitter of his eyes.
“You say you love me, but you don’t trust me, which is fucked up because I’m the one you call for help when you get yourself into deep shit. So you’re willing to let me save your life, but not let me inside it. I’m not interested in being a toy you pick up when you want to play and drop in the box when I’m not convenient.”
I opened my mouth to ask if he’d rather I hadn’t called him, but before I could, he held up his hand to stop me.
“I’d have ripped you a new one if you’d called anybody else, but that’s not my point.”
I rubbed my forehead, trying to think. What had sparked this? What had I said? Then I realized. I’d told him I wouldn’t get any rest unless I went home. I’d thought I’d been making a joke, but I’d only been reminding him that he didn’t know where I lived. That I wouldn’t tell him. That I didn’t trust him enough to tell him. I wanted a place I could hide from him.
I closed my eyes and rubbed my hands over my face. Six weeks ago I’d decided I had to protect myself from him. That sooner or later he’d decide I wasn’t the priority that his brother was. Now—I was surprised to find I didn’t believe it anymore. Maybe because when I needed him, he dropped everything and came without question. Maybe because he’d proved he was willing to fight for me. I needed to fix this. Whatever it took.
I looked at him. He waited, his expression detached, almost like he didn’t care one way or another. The taut lines of his neck and the hard stillness of his body—like he was set for a blow—said otherwise.
“Got a pen and paper?” I asked. If trusting was about choice, I was choosing Price. Maybe it would take my instincts time to get on board, but they would, even if I had to have my dreamer friend Cass go into my head and move things along. I froze. Had I really thought that? But I had, and that, more than anything else, convinced me that I wanted to do this.
“What?” Price said, taken aback.
“Paper. Pen. Do you have them?”
“What for?”
“Generally one takes the pen and writes on the paper.”
“Now?”
“Can’t think of a better time.” I smiled. He was so going to get revenge on me for this, but just saying I trusted him wasn’t going to be convincing. This would prove it beyond any doubt.
He made a growling sound and dug in the top of the far nightstand. He pulled out a four-inch square of paper and a pen. He thrust them at me. “Are you going to write me a letter? Dear John, maybe?”
What a high opinion he had of me. Deserved. I had to admit that. “You’ll see.” I went to the dresser and set the pad down. He stayed where he was. I glanced over my shoulder at him. “You can’t see from there.”
He stared at me a long moment, then curiosity got the better of him. He walked over to me. “What?”
I tapped the pen on the paper. “You know where the old Karnickey Burrows are? Up by the north wall?”
He nodded. “I’ve been past. Nobody goes in there. It’s not safe.”
“Safe enough. I live there.” I started sketching a map of just exactly how to get into my place.
“What?” Price said, sounding hoarse.
“I’m showing you I trust you.”
He put a hand over mine. “Not if you aren’t ready.”
I snorted and shook him off. “If you let me get away with running off, I might never be ready.”
He took my hand, rubbing my palm with his thumb. “I’m serious, Riley. I want—I
need
—you to trust me. But I need it to be real, not just something you feel you have to do because I get a little bit pissed. I don’t want you to fake it.”
I couldn’t help my lopsided grin. “I’ve
never
faked anything with you, I’ll have you know.”
He didn’t smile. “No point starting now.”
I scraped my teeth over my lower lip. “When my mom was murdered, my dad and I sort of went into hiding for awhile. We didn’t know who’d done it or why. Cops said it was random—stranger-on-stranger killing. Dad never believed it. He married Mel and had Taylor before Mom had been dead a year.”
That had hurt. He’d forgotten Mom so fast. It made me wonder if they’d really loved each other, especially with how much he seemed to love Mel. I wanted to believe he’d remarried because he wanted a mom for me, and a family. It took me a long time to realize that my distrust of the world had its seeds not just in Mom’s murder, but in Dad’s marriage so soon after. I doubted everybody, including the man I was supposed to love most in the world.
I’d never lost that doubt. In time it grew into general distrust. I loved my stepmom, my sister, and my stepbrothers with all my heart, but I didn’t share myself with them. I kept myself apart. I kept secrets. When Dad disappeared, I’d practically become paranoid. The only person besides family that I kept close to was Patti, and that’s because she refused to let me vanish. But I didn’t tell her where I lived, either.
Price was waiting for me to finish. I drew a breath and let it out slowly. “I stopped trusting people then. Everybody. I’m not entirely sure I even know how to, anymore. But I
want
to trust you. I think I do. I just need to break a really old habit. So let me.”
I turned back to my map.
Frank Karnickey had come to Diamond City at the beginning of the rush back in the early 1800s. He had no education and no money, but he was going to build an empire. He was a minor talent—supposedly he could calm animals like nobody’s business. In today’s world, he’d have been some sort of zoo whisperer. He’d staked a diamond claim, and then he’d built himself a compound to protect it. History said he’d had a rough charisma and he didn’t mind killing anybody who got in his way, but he’d do just about anything for the people who proved their loyalty.
The Karnickey Burrows, as the place came to be known, was a ramshackle pile of buildings inside a box canyon that wriggled back into the mountain in a snakelike chute. Trees on the heights cut off most of the light. With heavy snows every winter, the community inside had been linked by covered passages and underground tunnels. It had been a safe and comfortable place for Karnickey’s employees, if dark and gloomy. That is, it had been safe right up until a rival for Karnickey’s mistress had unleashed a tinkered virus into the canyon in the dead of winter. It killed most everyone in the Burrows within a week. After that, Karnickey Burrows was abandoned. The place was said to be cursed. Eventually, it was all but forgotten. The buildings collapsed, and the place turned into a ghost town.
A couple hundred years later, I moved in. With the help of my brothers, we’d built me a two-story house of rock and wood and a whole lot of scrap metal they’d used to hold it all together. Six different escape routes—above and underground—meant I’d never be trapped. A variety of turn-away spells made sure anyone who thought of investigating the Burrows changed their minds. If an intruder carried good enough nulls to get past those, he’d run into a gauntlet of briar magic that would lead him away and leave him disoriented and hurting, and telling the rest of the world the place was still cursed.