Kidnapped By Her Husbands (Wings of Artemis Book 1) (7 page)

He swung around, facing me. “What’s wrong? We’re safe. This was a lucky break. We can use this to our advantage. Why do you have that pinched look on your face?”

I hadn’t realized I’d made a face. “I don’t know.” Even if I wanted to analyze my emotional state, I didn’t want to do it with him around. I really didn’t want to explain that nerves made my hands shake and my knees knock together. I might become a quivering mess and never rise again.

“Bullshit.” Geoff stood. “You’re pale as a ghost. Minutes ago, you were bright and vibrant. That encounter spook you? They were harmless.”

“I…” Oh, what the hell. “You scare me to death.” There I’d said it. If it made him even angrier, then so be it. I had to get off his ship. Lying and pretending weren’t on my agenda. Truth had to get the job done.

He put a hand over his heart. “I scared you? What did I do?”

“You threatened me.” How did he not know? He’d been the one doing the warning.

Geoff shook his head. “When?”

“You told me if I gave you away, you’d get pissed.”

“Shit.” He stared at the ceiling briefly before he met my gaze again. “You thought I meant I would somehow hurt you? Let me clarify. If you had given us away and the other ship knew we were Nomads, I would’ve had to destroy the other ship. I’d have had to open fire on them. Otherwise, they might come and hurt you. Melissa, you’re never in any danger from me, not in this life or the next one. The rest of the world, maybe. You’re safe as a kitten from me.”

I unhooked my belt and stood. My hands were shaking, but I didn’t care. I needed answers. Cowardice had to go away. “Because of some vow you made?”

“That’s right.”

A mind-splitting headache hit me like someone had taken a bat to my head. I doubled over before falling to the ground. My eyesight fled and my stomach lurched. My poor son jolted inside me. What was happening? I couldn’t do anything but cry out.

Geoff grabbed me. “Melissa. Are you okay?” He hauled me onto the couch. “Shit. Shit. Shit. This is my fault. Protocol. I went too far. Deep breaths. Please. It’ll pass. I’ll stop. It won’t happen again. Don’t be sick. I’m sorry, sweetheart. I’m such an ass.”

The world went blissfully black.

* * * *

When I woke, I heard new voices around me. They were muffled, but soon an incessant beeping prompted me to open my eyes. I found myself inside a plastic tube. Why? Wires were attached to my arms and two nodes touched the outside of my nose. A soft whooshing noise came and went.

“Stop pacing or I’m going to strap you down.” A blond man wearing jeans and a green T-shirt faced Geoff. I couldn’t make out more because his back was to me. “It wasn’t your fault. Look at her. See again. See a million times. She’s fine. The protocols are tricky. There’s no exact way to manage this. Even I don’t know.”

“I thought she’d died.” Geoff rubbed at his eyes. “It was like a fucking nightmare. Find her and then lose her.”

The blond man put his hand on Geoff’s shoulder. “She’s not dead. The machines are balancing her adrenaline and calming her. The baby is safe. We’ll do a full scan on him later. All is well. I’m more concerned about you.”

“She’s awake.” Geoff rushed to my plastic enclosure. The barrier blurred his face and he seemed a distortion of himself.

Funny thoughts
…

“I know. I heard it when the beeping started again. It means the patient woke.” Blond man stiffened his spine before he turned and walked toward us. Even with the hazy plastic between us, I could make out his face. He had blue eyes to go with his blond hair and a long, aristocratic nose. His shoulders were broad, yet he stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Geoff, both of them well over six feet tall.

“If you knew she woke, why didn’t you say something?” Geoff snapped at him, rocking on his heels.

The blond shrugged, seemingly unconcerned with Geoff’s temper. “I thought she might like a moment to collect herself.”

Geoff shook his head and then spoke to me. “You okay, sweetheart?”

“Think so.” I tapped on the plastic. “What happened?”

“You are inside a modified body scanner, a healing machine. It’s safe for you, safe for the baby. You had a little bit too much adrenaline spike in your blood. You passed out. It’s all been fixed. This machine reset your levels and you woke.”

He made it sound so perfectly fine, when it fact the pain that had been surging through my brain had felt like a special kind of hell. “Are you some kind of doctor?”

“Some kind, for sure.” Geoff snorted.

“I’m Dane Hartman and yes.” He punched Geoff in the arm. “I’m a doctor. We can take you out of there now. Give you some water, see if you’ll eat something, and then check on your baby. Sound good?”

I liked the idea of getting out of my container. Dane pushed a button and the plastic made a grinding noise before separating into two parts above my head and retracting until it sank into the table I lay on.

Finally, I could see the room. As I swung my legs over the side of the medical bed, I took a good look around. Seven beds filled the space, with computers, monitors, and vials lining the walls. Things seemed strewn here, there, and everywhere, or if there was an organizational method, I couldn’t immediately discern it.

Dane ran a hand through his hair and stared at me. “Melissa.” His use of my name caught my attention. “You okay? We’ll have your vitals on the screen any second. I don’t anticipate any problems.”

“What happened to me?” It seemed a good place to start.

The doctor ran a hand over his face in one long motion. The strained movement brought my attention to the dark circles under his eyes. Geoff had them, too. Did neither of them ever get any sleep? My kidnapper moved from Dane and limped to take a seat on a chair against the far wall. His movements were stiff, like his body didn’t want to bend.

“You had your mind erased, as you know.”

Geoff yawned loudly. “Dane helped invent the technology. No one knows more about this, sweetheart, than he does.”

Dane gave him a quick glance over his shoulder before he walked to the counter with one of the sinks and filled a glass with water. He palmed something, a substance that immediately dissolved into the liquid. When he finished, he delivered the liquid to Geoff. “Drink this. You’re dehydrated. It’s water.”

He lied. Geoff, rubbing his eyes and practically rocking in the chair, hadn’t noticed. I opened and closed my eyes. The right thing to do would be to tell Geoff. Lying counted as sinful. And yet…

I scooted on the table. It might be interesting to see how this played out. I needed off whatever ship we were on now. Had Dane given him something helpful or harmful? I didn’t want to play my hand too soon. Geoff was right. Cards helped with the intrigue.

Dane touched his wrist and a second later a voice sounded in the room. “Need me, bro?”

“In about two minutes, if you would.” A beep sounded when Dane touched his wrist again.

“You anticipating some kind of trouble you’ll need Nolan for?” Geoff asked after he took a long sip of his water.

“Not trouble.” Dane faced me. “I’m not the premiere expert on mind erasure. The chief doctor on the project would be far more qualified, though any of the doctors on the team are well versed.”

“I don’t think she asked for your credentials.” Geoff stood. “Point is he’s really good at this stuff. He’s on the team now perfecting the memory recall machine.”

My pulse accelerated and the equipment dinged loudly. “I don’t want it returned.” I couldn’t find the right words to convey how deep my conviction was on the subject. “Please. You did me a great service making it in the first place. I can have a chance now. The baby can, too. I can’t go back to being a w—” I cut myself off. Whore was such a trigger for Geoff. “Slut again.”

“Not a better choice.” Geoff groaned. “Do we have to do definitions again?”

“It’s like she shot me when she said that.” Dane cleared his throat. “You spit out the dogma perfectly. I’m glad to see the training worked so well. Indoctrination and compulsion are beautiful psychological tricks and the Nobles paid a lot of money to get the best to design them, down to the trick with the chair in the room. Did it lean or remain or on four legs? There has been so much debate.”

My temple throbbed. “I don’t understand.”

“No, of course you don’t. Listen, we don’t have all the answers about repairing the damage. Sometimes we can’t. Some women respond to the treatment, some don’t. I can’t tell you if we can make you remember. There are all kinds of variations. You could get some memory or none at all. We won’t know until we get to The Bridge and find out. What happened to you on the shuttle was Geoff, without meaning to, broke protocol. The little bit we do understand is its best not to let the sufferer know too much about their life beforehand. It triggers the conditioned response to fight the pain. You don’t want those memories. It hurt losing them. It’s a festering wound your mind doesn’t want aggravated.” The computer flashed and Dane walked over to it. “And of course you’ll have a choice. If you don’t want them, we won’t give them to you.”

“What?” Geoff shouted. “Don’t tell her that.”

“Everyone gets a choice. By the time we get to The Bridge, if she doesn’t want the procedure, she doesn’t have to get it.” Dane’s eyes narrowed as he swung around, then stalked across the medical bay to face off with Geoff. “There is such a thing as free will.”

“They took her free will. This is resetting it the way it was.”

Dane threw his hands in the air. “Protocol. Or do you want to almost kill her again?”

“What’s going on here?” Nolan strode into the room, shoving himself between Dane and Geoff with nothing more than the force of his question. He was huge and for a second I couldn’t breathe. The two men separated, Dane returning to me while Geoff retreated to his chair.

“He told her she didn’t have to have her mind fixed.”

“Nolan, you’re going to want to catch Geoff before he falls over.”

“Wha…” Geoff never got to finish his question. Geoff collapsed and Nolan grabbed him before he hit the floor. A second later, my kidnapper snored like he’d been unconscious for hours. I shifted in my seat. Well, I hadn’t seen Geoff passing out coming. At least now I knew what the white powder did. It wasn’t currently very helpful, but who knew when I’d have to knock someone out?

Nolan whistled through his clenched teeth. “How much did you give him?”

“Enough to knock out an elephant. He’ll sleep twenty hours, maybe more. His vitals were reading like he hadn’t gotten more than an hour of rest a night for the last eight weeks. He also annoyed me.” Dane took a deep breath, his chest expanding. “Melissa, this is Nolan.”

“We’ve already been introduced.” Nolan didn’t look at me when he spoke. Instead, he swung Geoff over his shoulder. “I’ll be back after I deposit him. Wish I had known you were going to do this. We have a mission. Now I have to figure out how to do it without Geoff.”

Nolan left as fast as he’d entered. Dane shrugged, his eyes amused when he looked at me. “You’d think they’d all know by now not to take drinks from me.”

Chapter 5

Smart Bombs and Pink Lace

DANE
studied the monitor, running his fingers through his hair. I suspected it was a nervous tic. He’d done it several times since I’d woken. His blond locks looked soft, and I had to keep my fingers where they were to stop from touching him. Geoff’s fingernails. Dane’s hair. I must have a real thing for tactile experiences. As he moved, I caught a whiff of his scent. I didn’t know what the aroma was but it reminded me of coffee. I could close my eyes and drift away in the warmth of it.

Only I didn’t because I couldn’t let myself fall under the spell of my captors.

“I don’t suppose you’re going to let me out of here?”

He shook his head. “Nope.”

Someone had to see things my way. If I bided my time, I’d get out. End of story. I’d keep my faith I travelled the right path.

“Huh.”

His mutter caught my attention. “Something wrong?”

“Probably not.” He shook his head. “Lay on that table, will you? I need to see if we have a little glitch in our system. I’m getting an unusual reading. I want to take a deeper look.”

“Is it the baby?” Utter terror filled my soul. I’d do anything for the life inside me. Even claw my way off this ship if I had to. “Did my episode hurt him?”

Dane met my gaze and placed a hand on my shoulder. “Amazing, the mother baby bond. He’s not even here yet and you’re ready to jump out of your skin to save him. I haven’t looked at your baby yet. The computer tells me your bloodwork is fine for a third trimester pregnancy. That tells me most likely your baby is fine. We’ll look at him in a minute. For now, I just need to take one more look at you. I’m good at this. Trust me, will you?”

I wanted to, but what he asked wasn’t easy for me. “I’m here against my will. You could be the greatest doctor ever and I’m going to have a hard time believing you mean me well.”

“Melissa.” He brushed the hair off my forehead. “There are five guys on this ship and every one of us would die for you. Let’s hope no one has to. You’re safe with me, both on and off my table.”

“I…” What was I to do with his declaration? Why would they die for me? My head hurt again and Dane’s machine beeped loudly.

“Easy now.” He entered a code and the plastic pressed outwards to cover me again. “This time we’ll leave your head out, shall we? Not a full circle around.”

Dane thought the machine caused my upset? “It really didn’t bother me the first time. Not a big deal. Guess I’m not claustrophobic.”

“Really? Amazing what the human brain does.” He glanced away from me, typing on a pad on the edge of the table. “Like, for example, Geoff told me you got space sick on the shuttle.”

“Why is that interesting?” I liked watching his mouth work. His lips were full, his face expressive, although the way his gaze met mine and then pulled off so frequently, I wondered if his mind was always slightly somewhere else, doing a million things.

He exhaled loudly. “Protocol. I can’t get mad at Geoff if I’m getting stupid about it, too. Let’s change the subject. Is the temperature in here okay for you?”