“Decide what you’re going to do,” Mick said softly.
Doyle touched his head before pressing the heel of his hand against it.
“Why are you here, Doyle, working for the Patron?
He looked into Mick’s eyes trying to resist before he gave in.
“My mother,” he hesitated. “She’s sick, has been for a long time. I’ve watched her beg for help, but no one would help. I promised when I was old enough I’d help her, but I need money, the kind that I can only get working here.”
He let the laser fall to the floor; he wasn’t a killer.
“Take her to A’rouk Medical Facility. Ask for Jean Smith; she is the coordinator at the facility. When you meet her, say these words exactly. Mick said you and only you are to help my family. Doyle, will you remember?”
“Yes.”
“Then go.”
The kid turned tail and ran. Mick closed his eyes while holding Jaz’s hand tightly. She tried to see what he was seeing until it spread out before her. He was watching Doyle. An assassin stood and targeted him; a tree branch snapped and impaled the assassin.
A deep breath came out her mouth as she entered her body. Mick protected that kid until he could get off the Patron’s property.
They walked through room after room each one decorated more opulent than the one before.
“Mick,” a voice called his name echoing through the house. “You’ll never find me. Just turn around and leave and I’ll leave your clone alone.”
“It’s much too late for that, Patron.” Mick opened a door to a room that was the size of a ballroom. Instead of leaving, he walked across it until he came to a small panel in the wall. He ran his fingers along the edge until he touched an indent. A door formed and opened. They walked into the Patron’s bedroom.
He was an old man hooked up to many different life support machines. Jaz’s heart went out to him. He had long silver hair with bluish green eyes that suggest he may have been good-looking when he was younger. There were age spots on his face. He looked several hundred years old.
The room was beautiful. The bedframe was carved out of solid wood. He was as rich as a king and his room, his house, showed it.
“So this is the young woman who has caused me so much trouble. I lost my favorite assassin because of you. I guess it is somehow fitting, and I was ready to replace John. As you can see, I am an old man. Killing me would be against everything you stand for.”
He wasn’t talking to Mick, he was appealing to Jaz. “I will forget she exists and rescind the harvest order on her.”
“What good will that do? It’s gone past the point you can control.”
“True, but my men won’t come after her ever again, and I’ll even pay for the house that I leveled. That seems fair.”
Mick walked over and sat on the side of the bed, his blue eyes changing color to silver.
“You killed your mother. She wanted to place you in cryo until a cure for your disease was found, but you wanted to live with her money. The thought of being frozen while your mom and your siblings burned through the family fortune ate at you.
“You stood above her as she pleaded for her life, then you plunged a knife into her and listened as she died screaming. You didn’t stop there; you killed your sister, then your brother. Staged it to look like a robbery and waited for the police.
“Everything went to you, but by then you realized you loved killing. With the money you had, it was easy to cover your tracks.”
“I was a sick young man when that happened. I was out of my mind with pain. I’m different now; I abhor killing. Young woman, you have to know men can change. Like your man changed.”
He was playing her, and she knew it, but he looked so pitiful lying in that bed unable to defend himself.
“Mick…” she didn’t know what to say, but there had to be a different solution. They could call the authorities.
“I’m different now. I’ve made peace with my demons.”
“Why didn’t you say that in the beginning.” Mick leaned over and touched the Patron’s temple then placed a kiss in the center of his forehead. He stood up and laid an old fashioned fully loaded revolver on the bed next to his hand before walking over to Jaz.
“What have you done!” The Patron screamed sounding much stronger than his old man voice. The Patron’s eyes turned dark in front of her and his hands raised as if he was warding someone off. He pleaded as fear entered his eyes.
“I’ve released the shadows of those you’ve killed. Since you have made peace with them, you will have no trouble revisiting them.”
They left the room listening to the Paton’s desperate screams. His voice echoed through the compound. Jaz felt her heart shake, but she knew he deserved so much more. As they walked into his control room, there was the loud sound of the revolver as the noise ricocheted through the hallways and then silence.
She turned to look at Mick.
“He decided to pay for his sins in death as opposed to suffering for them.”
He walked over to the sound system that would carry through the house as well as the compound.
“The Patron is dead. You will need to find new employment. I will be leaving with my mate; if any of you come after us today or any other day, I promise you I will send you to meet the Patron.”
Jaz watched the vid screens looking at the assassins that were going through the house tearing things off the walls or going through drawers.
“What are they doing?”
“Stealing. He deserves it. He stole what he has; now others will steal from him.”
Jaz slipped her hand in his, and together they walked out the house.
“Mick, did you read his mind?”
“I can touch broken minds; the mind reveals to me what broke in order for me to fix it. There are times when the mind is too far gone to be mended.”
*~*~*~*
22 Cherry Lane. She’d never been so happy to see a place in her life. Mick led her upstairs and into the bathroom. He turned the water on and then began undressing her. He pulled her shirt over her head leaving her bra on. Leading her to the rim of the tub he indicated for her to sit. He went to his knees, and untied the laces to her boots before he pulled them off one at a time. The socks followed.
She looked down at him, her hand on his shoulder for support as he took one foot in his hand and caressed the cramp out of it. He switched to the other foot and did the same. She gave a sigh of relief and stood up when he gently tugged on her. His hands went to the waistband of the pants he created for her. His nimble finger deftly undid the button, and then pulled the zipper down.
Her pants fell and she stepped out of them wearing nothing but her underclothes. He took a step back and quickly took off his clothes. Moving behind her, he wrapped his arms around her and held her close. One hand cupped her breast, warming her.
“Mick?”
“I just want to hold you for a minute.” His voice was a soft rumble in her ear.
Her head rested back against him as he simply held her, breathing in her scent.
“I can’t lose you,” he whispered before he pulled her bra off and her panties down.
He led her to the shower allowing her to enter first, stepping into the water, the hot spray made her body relax even more. Mick picked up her sponge before pouring a gel onto it. He turned her to face the water as he began to wash her slowly. His strong hands caressed her back while he ran the sponge down her spine.
“I love your hands. Your fingers are like magic.”
He took one and ran it down her spine, caressing every vertebra on the way down. Taking the sponge, he worked her neck releasing any tension there before he started work on her shoulders.
His hands caressed the backs of her arms before the sponge covered her in suds. He went to his knees and started caressing her ass, then he stopped to place kisses on the small of her back before he took little nibbles at her backside making her body tremble and her pussy throb. She let out little moans as he caressed and cleaned her.
The sponge slid over her making her want him even more. His hands slid down her thighs to her calves and back up as his finger stroked between her legs. She wanted to cry not fair, but she was to scared he would stop. He finished washing her legs and then stood turning her, so the water sluiced down her back and rinsed off the suds.
Leaning over, he kissed her; it was soft and dreamy and made her feel loved and cherished. When he came up for air, she leaned into him, her head on his chest. He could have gone by himself tonight, taken care of the problem and she might not even know. Instead, he took her with him, showed her who he was and faced rejection at her hands one more time. Now he was showing her another side of him. A side that was tender and loving.
He kissed her neck before licking the beads of water off of her. He took the sponge and placed more gel on it and slowly washed her body, caressing her. Her nipples stood at attention as he plucked them, playing with them until she felt her knees shake. The spark in his eyes told her he was enjoying himself. He stroked the sponge down until he reached her belly, then he went to his knees to look at her birthmark.
The birthmark fascinated him, so he kissed it. Jaz was his jewel, the one person he couldn’t do without. He continued to caress her, wash her before moving down to her center. She was already glistening here. He should control himself, instead his tongue came out and licked at the folds of her pussy lapping up the juices that were seeping out.
Her high keening sound was what did it, he dropped the sponge and went to work on her until she grasped his hair and begged for release. He placed two fingers in her as he sucked on her clit. Her thighs trembled as her body tried to fall and she went over the edge falling into a world that only he could take her to.
He stood and held her until she could hold herself up. He washed quickly and rinsed them both off before they left the shower.
Loud voices interrupted her sleep, bringing her to an abrupt wakefulness. These weren’t the loud, happy voices of brothers bickering and teasing as they made breakfast. Something was wrong, and her heart slammed into her throat as she realized Mick wasn’t in the bed beside her. Rolling out the bed, she threw on some clothes and prayed she was wrong as she moved down the hallway.
The scene unfolding in the living room was straight out of a nightmare. Ash had changed; his beast was out in full force. Lucca and Raphael were holding him back, and they had also changed into a form she hadn’t seen before. Mick looked like the demon of seduction, and they were all struggling with each other, loud voices rising over each other.
It was her gasp that made them turn to look at her. Ash growled, making her back up. Mick growled at him, and she was waiting for a fight.
“What’s going on?”
Damon stepped in front of all of them to look at her. “Brook is missing.”
“Ash is trying to get to the Earth so he can turn over every stone looking for her,” Lucca added.
“What do you mean Brook is missing? How could she be missing?”
“Maybe Ash will change forms, and we can get to the bottom of this. His instinct to protect his mate made him change forms. Our other forms can pick up clues we can’t in these forms,” Damon said.
He gave an angry growl before his form changed, became normal.
The Patron had been dead for two days. The news vids carried the story along with debates on exactly how he died.
“Brook woke up before me,” Ash said as he finally pulled himself together. “She does that a lot. Says it’s her time to panic because it’s still surreal that she’s living in the future with me. Since we’ve been staying with Damon, she goes out back and looks at the waterfall. Sometimes she goes for a swim in the pond.
“I sleep in deliberately to give her time by herself. Today she didn’t come back when I expected her. I waited a little longer. Just five minutes, but still I waited.” His words came out a little defensive. “When she didn't come back, I went to find her, but she wasn’t outside. When I got back to the room, I realized there was a note attached to the closet.
“It said she was going to the mall now that she didn’t have to worry anymore, she wanted to buy a gift for Jaz and her brothers. She signed it kisses and hugs be back soon. Tracing the hover she used was easy. Damon took me directly to the mall, but she wasn’t there. We went to the hover and found packages on the ground around it and signs of a struggle. Someone took her.”
Jaz shook her head. That was impossible; she looked around the living room that the brothers had enlarged because the quaint room that was there before they came was nowhere near big enough for all of them.
“The Patron’s dead, Brook is safe.” Jaz’s words came out like a cry for help. Nothing can happen to Brook just because she wanted to buy Jaz a present.
Who would do this? No one would. “I know who took her,” she screamed as her knees gave out. She tumbled backward into Mick’s arms. She stood there shaking before she finally gained enough courage to look at Ash.
“It had to be Roy. He hates Brook, blames her for my rebellion.” They all moved at once out the door and down a hallway that she didn’t know existed in the house.
They were in the security room. It reminded her of the one in Ash’s house, but this one was far more advanced.
“When you don’t have a security room, make one,” Mick said to her before he directed her to a chair.
“Lucca, pull up the feeds from the gallery.” He sat at a console and his fingers started to dance over the keys.
She couldn’t remember Lucca ever seeing Roy, so how would he know what he looked like. Within a few minutes, he had Roy pulled up. He was walking down the corridor of the gallery and then Brook came into the picture. She was smiling; it was obvious that she was enjoying shopping.
“I should have been with her this morning.” Ash’s voice was enough to bring Jaz to her knees with the pain in it.
“No, she wanted to surprise you. She wanted to surprise us all. Look how happy she is,” Jaz said, watching Brook smile as she walked.
Brook never saw Roy when she walked past him, but Roy saw her. The look of hatred that crossed his face was enough to make Jaz want to throw up.