Power Trip: Double Helix, Book 1 (10 page)

“Starving.”

“Come on.” He gestured for her to precede him down the hall to the kitchen. “Tell me more about this kidnapping thing.”

She sat at the island. “I can’t tell you any more because I don’t know anything. Jake took off to give the guy’s cell and wallet to Truman and promised he’d tell me everything when he got back. He said you were right about me being a neutral talent, Cal, but that’s all I know. Well, that and the fact Jake’s been keeping secrets from me for our entire lives.”

She sounded frustrated and he wanted to comfort her. Comfort her? Whoa.

One night of experimentation with no dangerous reaction on the heart monitor and EEG didn’t mean he could afford to get attached to her, especially when there was no guarantee her talent would prevent her from getting hurt the next time he touched her. He needed to stay focused on the developing situation, not his unexpected feelings for Audrey. Even as he had the thought, he recognized the futility of remaining detached. Now that he’d met her, he couldn’t imagine putting his energy into pleasuring a hooded sub ever again. And that was the most dangerous reaction of all.

He set a glass of water in front of her, then turned to dip two bowls of potato soup from the pot on the stove. She gazed at him through narrowed eyes as he cut thick slices of bread and put butter on the table. “What?” he asked, when her intent regard became too much.

“Is there bacon in this soup?”

He handed her a spoon and sat down beside her. “No, I made it this morning with your boundaries in mind.”

“Pretty sure of yourself, aren’t you?”

“I prefer optimistic. So…your life was threatened today?”

“I think so.” She looked down at her bowl.

“You’re taking it awfully well.”

“It doesn’t seem real.”

“You’re safe here,” he assured her. “The perimeter is fenced and I know the minute anything heavier than five pounds touches the driveway.”

“So you’re optimistic, but paranoid?”

He buttered a piece of bread and handed it to her. “I don’t like surprises. Plus, I’m a techno-geek. I like to invent things.”

They ate in silence for a few minutes. He wanted to text Jake, but he sensed Audrey had reached her limit for being left out of the loop. “Did your brother say when he would be back?”

“No.” Her tone suggested Jake was going to be in trouble when he arrived.

His soup was gone, so he got himself another bowl. He ate it more slowly, needing something to do other than stare at her and try to keep his hands to himself. When he was finished, he stood and put his bowl in the sink. “Would you like more soup?” he asked.

“No, thank you.” The odd note in her voice made him glance over at her. She was staring at him hungrily, the way he wanted to look at her. Her jeans and zippered fleece made her curves look soft and inviting. He remembered how she had looked naked, prowling over his leather table, and his mouth watered.

“Cal?” Her voice trembled. “I’m out of my depth with you.”

That was exactly how he felt too.

She cleared her throat. “I’ve never considered a kinky relationship. Is relationship even the right word? I’ve always taken pride in being…well, normal doesn’t seem appropriate…mainstream, conventional, conservative…” She broke off, looking frustrated again.

“Vanilla?” he suggested, sitting down next to her again.

She sighed and nodded. “Not the first time I’ve heard that word.”

“Nothing wrong with vanilla, but it’s just one flavor. Think of all the others.” There was a husky plea in his voice. “Do you have to hang a label on us?”

“It’s not a label. It’s a…realistic analysis of what we have in common. You claim to be a geek, but come on. Empirical evidence proves that false. You wear black leather and drive a motorcycle—”

“Give me five minutes to grab a lab coat and the keys to my sedate Honda.” He fumbled in a drawer for the thick glasses he wore at work to disguise the blue of his eyes and put them on. “Does that help?”

She snorted. “Turning into Clark Kent doesn’t change anything. I still see Superman. No intelligent woman would turn you down.” She crossed her arms and frowned. “And I’m a smart woman, Cal. When I don’t understand something, I learn about it. If I can’t figure it out, I find someone who can and I learn from them. I want to know why my brain turns off when you’re in the room. I don’t understand why kink gives me the creeps but I’m attracted to you. It scares me that I let you restrain me last night after knowing you for an hour. I’m not like that. Can you explain any of this to me?”

“No, I can’t.” He could barely resist the pull of her, drawing him closer in some invisible, indefinable way, even as he felt her slipping away from him. “But I can teach you anything you want to know about kink.”

She shook her head. “And if I don’t want to learn? What then? What if I really am vanilla? What if that
is
my flavor?”

Panic stopped the breath in his throat. The inches separating them felt like miles. The thought of losing her sent a surge of energy through his body and his vision went blue around the edges.

He fought for control. This might be the biggest negotiation of his life, but it was still a negotiation. The most important thing was to stay calm, to keep them both safe, physically and mentally. He wanted to push her limits, but she was right. She didn’t even know what that meant.

“Take a deep breath, Audrey.” He took one too. “We’ll figure it out.”

“How are we going to figure it out, Cal? You get off by immobilizing women, whipping them but never touching them. That doesn’t do it for me.” She lifted her chin. He saw a bluff in her eyes, but he didn’t call it.

Too far, too fast, and now they would have to start from the beginning. Slowly, methodically, he would break down her barriers again. He stroked a finger through her glossy ponytail. “And I bet you get off in the missionary position, with every inch of skin exposed. The thought of that terrifies me…and arouses me beyond belief. I turned to BDSM because how else was I going to get laid? Kink camouflages reality for my partners and relieves me of the necessity of explaining my talent. But now it’s a part of me. I love it. I’ve never had sex any other way. I don’t even know if I can do it. Bare is frightening, dangerous, but I’m willing to experiment with you. Safely. Carefully. Consensually. You may be vanilla and I may be kinky, but I am incredibly attracted to you and we’re both scientists. I have an open mind. How about you? Are you willing to try again? Another experiment?”

Her velvety eyes widened. He counted every long, deep breath he took while she considered his question.

Finally, she nodded. Oxygen flooded his veins, making him giddy.

“But I want to control the next experiment.”

He raised an eyebrow at her challenge.

She faced him squarely. “I let you have your way with me. Now I want to strap you to the table.” He sensed where she was going with this. His electrons surged. She smiled and he saw the reflection of blue sparks in her dark eyes. “Fair is fair. I want you naked and immobile while I’m hooked up to monitors and very safely, carefully, consensually touching you.” His ears rang as if his head was a bell and she had just hit it with a hammer.

“What’s that?” she asked and he blinked, amazed that she had heard it too. Then he laughed weakly.

“The perimeter alarm.” He chuckled again. “Jake’s back.”

“Audrey—”

He was going to say no. Damn it. She should have kept her mouth shut. It would have been better to have had one hot night with him, a night she could remember forever, and skip the inevitable rejection. He was too cool for her, anyway.

“Forget it.” She jumped off her stool and took her bowl to the sink. When Jake got to the door, they were leaving. Immediately.

“Audrey, I’m not laughing at you.”

Right.
She kept her back to him.

She felt him come to stand behind her. “I’m laughing because you turned it all around on me. I was going to push
your
limits, break down
your
barriers. I want you, Audrey, so bad I’m willing to consider breaking the only hard limit I have—not letting a sub touch me.”

“I’m not a sub,” she said automatically.

“You don’t want to be a sub,” he corrected her. “The fact that you submitted to me last night, so easily, so completely, says differently even if you claim you were only doing it to explore your talent.” She heated at his reminder and was glad he couldn’t see her face as she fought the arousal his words caused.

His breath feathered against her neck. “I want to take you downstairs and pick up where we left off, but you’ve just asked me to do the one thing I’m honestly not sure I can do—give up control. That is no small thing, so please have as much patience with my inexperience as I was planning on having with yours.” There was still an echo of laughter in his voice.

She opened her eyes and turned to face him. “So is that a yes or a no?” She reached up to tug the ridiculously square wire-rims off his face.

He took them from her hand and tossed them onto the island. “It’s a maybe. Eventually. BDSM is a complicated game and you don’t know the rules.”

“You said you can teach me.”

“Yes, I did. And I want to teach you. But we hardly have a typical scenario here. I’m dominant not only because I like to be but because I need to be…with most women. You’re a neutral, but you might not be completely safe from my powers. The idea of having vanilla sex excites me to the point of losing control just thinking about it, which adds a whole extra level of head fuck for me. And let’s not forget someone attacked you last night and tried to abduct you today. Can we just take it slow and do things my way for a while? Please…I beg you.” Humor glinted in his eyes again, making her aware of the irony in his word choice.

The doorbell rang.

Cal didn’t move.

“I really want to touch you,” she admitted. She looked at his chest, broad beneath the cotton of his shirt, and bit her lip. She wanted to press her open mouth against the strong column of his neck and kiss his shadowed jaw.

The doorbell rang again. Twice.

One of them had to bend if they wanted to make this work, and the patient look in his eyes told her he knew she could bend. Because she already had. Last night. And if she was honest with herself, she had to admit she wanted to try it again.

She closed her eyes so he wouldn’t see her desire and whispered, “Damn it.”

“Is that a yes or a no?” His voice sounded strained as he used her words.

She saw need in his gaze when she opened her eyes and it gave her the courage to sigh, “Yes.”

“Thank you.” He bent and quickly pressed his lips against hers, a gift and a promise that weakened her knees as he turned and moved toward the front door. She sank back down on her stool and picked up her glass of water. Her lips tingled as she drank the cold liquid, slaking her thirst but not cooling her desire.

“Geraci works at Genecorp,” Jake said, instead of hello. He eyed the soup pot on the stove and Cal reached for a clean bowl.

“What?” Audrey asked, noticing with irritation that Jake knew which drawer held spoons.

“Yup.” He sat beside her, reaching for bread and nodding his thanks to Cal, who set a bowl of soup in front of him. “Nothing from the phone yet.”

Audrey’s mind spun ahead, trying to connect the dots between her job and the odd events of the last twenty-four hours as her brother spooned soup.

“You said your laptop is missing?” Jake spoke with his mouth full.

She nodded.

“Tell me again. Everything that happened to you at work today,” he demanded.

She went over it in her head as she spoke the details aloud.
Missing ID, a security guard with a needle, dead animals and Peter’s unusual attentiveness.
What would have happened if she had let the guard prick her finger or gotten into Peter’s car instead of her own? And where was her laptop? What was the connection? Suddenly, she thought of her mother’s medical chart, still in her car.
Aluminum.

She looked at Cal. “Can I borrow your computer?”

“Of course. I’ll get it.”

When Cal returned with a laptop, she opened the browser and typed in her storage site. She logged in and opened her file folder. Empty.

She stared at the screen. “All of my files are gone.” She would have to start all over.

“Log out,” Jake instructed.

Cal put his hand on her back, spreading warm tingles. She leaned into the comfort of his touch.

“You two need a room?” Jake asked.

“No,” she said, shooting him a dirty look. “But I do need my lab animals.” Maybe an autopsy would give her a clue.

Jake showed his teeth in a grin and pushed his bowl away. “Then let’s go get your pets.”

“Not so fast.” He’d already hinted that he’d steered her away from kink because he didn’t want her involved in his world. How much of her mental and emotional makeup had he manipulated
for her own good?
“Not until you tell me everything, and I do mean
everything
, that impacts this situation. I don’t like being manipulated, Jake. Make me understand why you’ve kept me in the dark about so many things. I can’t fight what I don’t understand, and your big brother act has outlived its usefulness.”