The Revenger (30 page)

“There’s what you want, and what you need.” She didn’t want to play his game. This game. It was looking more and more like she just didn’t have the time. Savvy thought back over what might have triggered the episode earlier, but she couldn’t pinpoint anything unusual—unusual for her, anyway. Maybe the chemical in her blood just had its own agenda. Really, it had from the beginning. Her eyes were her gauge, so it seemed—windows to the soul and all that. And her soul was crumbling without the hits from her people on the other side. She had to stay the course. Her window to make any kind of impact on Sagan was running short.

He tilted his head. “Right this second what I want and what I need are exactly the same.” He exhaled so long it almost became a whistle. “I’m here to earn it. Like you said.”

“Let’s begin then. Sit. Bring your drink. Tell me why you’re such an asshole.” She motioned to the kitchen table.

He looked scared, as if she actually had a gun to his head. Maybe
she
was the gun to his head. Maybe she should be grateful she’d lasted this long. Her heart beat a little faster with the uncertainty of it all. Could she get through to Sagan? Would she see her brother again? Would she end up with Kal and Sara? And now there were Boston and Trooper to consider, as they too held a claim on the tiny pink part of her dead heart.

“I’m an asshole because I get what I want.” He began posturing immediately.

“Why is Jack safe from you?” She set her glass down and skimmed her hand over the side, wondering if he’d dare be honest, as Jack had been.

“Oh, straight for it, huh? I bet you like orgasaming without foreplay too.” The sneer was in place.

“Deflection. Answer the question. You want to earn? This is how.” She lifted her glass to her lips.

“I thought I told you to dress for dinner.” He shifted in his seat, sliding his suit jacket off.

“Distraction. Answer the question.” She took her sip. Jeans and T-shirt, her hair in a high ponytail, was as much effort as she was willing to put in. Anyway, this was Kal’s favorite version of her.

“No one wears a pair of jeans like you, baby.”
She remembered his hands sliding across her back pockets. He’d grabbed her ponytail and turned her head for a kiss. His lips were home.

She tapped her fingers on the table.

“Jack is a friend.” Sagan unbuttoned his top button and slid his tie’s knot loose.

“What’s a friend to you? ’Cause it seemed he liked baiting you at the homecoming party you threw for yourself.” Savvy kept her gaze steady on his. Was he checking for mirrors in her pupils?

“He’s someone who knows who I was before I became what I am.” He dropped his gaze to his lap.

“That’s the Silas I want to know. Him.” She finished her drink and set the glass down. With the same motion she got up and crossed the space to him. She turned his face to hers.

“I can’t be him anymore.” He looked at her chest.

“You can.” She put one hand on his shoulder, the other on his heart.

“Can you be who you were before all of this?” His eyes flashed.

His words took her back to the night it all changed. How hard it had been to find the will to live. But she had fought. And her pain was real. He was a spoiled narcissist.

“I can get in touch with the ghost of her when I have to. Like now.
Now
me wants to kill you.
Now
me hates the suppression that ring brings.
Now
me wants to silence the screaming I hear when you’re around.” Savvy shook her head. The visions of his death briefly turned her on. “But this conversation? You’re talking to the ghost of me. I would’ve cared what made you so jaded, so violent. I would’ve wondered what could save you, or if evil was all you could be.” She shrugged, keeping her hands on him despite the violence that hummed in her fingertips.

“She sounds like a nice lady.” He lifted his eyebrows.

Savvy resisted the urge to roll her eyes and instead accepted his compliment.
“She was. Sometimes. And sometimes she made selfish choices.”

“Like what?”

“Don’t change the subject. Tell me what Jack’s friend was afraid of. Is it easier like that? Talk about him like he’s someone else.”

Sagan looked at her silently for a moment before he spoke again. “He wasn’t afraid. It was desire to fight for what he wanted, and he could only keep what he hung on to.”

He had taken her bait. Now she listened, letting him spread out in the attention she provided.

“You see, my mother wanted to be a house girl. My father’s house was set up like mine: women always available to service him, service the men in his employ. Mother was a maid. In her head, my father was the ultimate. She wanted him to swoop in and take her from the work, drape her in diamonds, like an evil Cinderella. I was a means to an end. My father was so loving, he had a DNA test done to confirm I was his. And when they told him we were related, he was disgusted.” Sagan shook his head and looked away.

“Anyway, Jack’s family lived in the house he has now. And when we first hung out? He didn’t even know where I lived. He was my friend before I knew I was my father’s kid
and
after. Nothing ever changed for him. And he knew what my father was. I told him everything. And he stayed true. We were going to go into business. Back in the day we surfed, skateboarded. Our plan was to open a shop on the sand, the two of us.”

Savvy crossed her arms in front of her chest. She felt a little shaky, but she didn’t want to stop his flow. Was it another episode coming on? She nodded that she was following along.

“All my father’s children turned on him—or he on them—except me. In the end there was only me. I watched how he ran his business. Memorized it. And I’ve close to doubled the profits. And Mom? She died before she could do anything other than mourn his loss. She had no confidence that I could do what I’ve done.”

“So the only witness you have is Jack.” She tried warming her arms by rubbing her hands on them.

“You could put it that way.” He closed down, crossing his arms as well.

“I mean to say he knows what you’ve worked for.” She pulled out the chair next to him and sat down. Heat and chills went up her spine.

“You okay?” His eyebrows pulled together.

She ignored his question. “So you’ve fought for this, and now it’s yours. Is it everything you wanted?”

“Yes. It is. Being powerful is everything I wanted.” He turned in his chair, hitting her leg with his own.

The touch was amplified. Her nerves had been electrified by whatever was happening inside her.

“Then why are you sitting so close to me?” She leaned in, feeling her eyes cloud over.

He matched her, his lips close to hers.

“When you know how deadly I am?” Savvy closed the gap and kissed him.

*~*~*~*

When Savannah kissed him, Silas pulled her flush to him, easily moving her to straddle his lap. Her skin under her T-shirt was so silky. She was strong and hard but soft in all the right places. He looked in her eyes, needing to feel his chest burn the way only she could make it. Instead he saw himself.
Damn it.

Her lips went slack, and her arms fell to her sides.

“No. No. You need to snap out of it, Savannah. Fight for it. Fight!”

As if she’d been pulled from drowning, she gasped as her eyes regained their color. And instead of reeling from where she’d been, wherever the mirrors took her, she went back to him—hands in his hair, breasts pushed against his chest, kissing his face.

“Wait.” He pulled her away. “What was that?”

She shivered before shaking her head. “I think I’m dying a little bit. Which means you’re far from safe.”

“I didn’t pick my lifestyle because I liked safe.”

“You didn’t pick it because you wanted to either—I mean, just my take from what you told me.” She pushed off of his lap, and he let her go.

“Wait. Don’t try to put me in the role of a good guy in your head.” He stood too, his erection pressing against the zipper of his pants.

“No. Never. You’re horrible. But you were trying to get respect from the people in your life, and save for one friend, you had to use fear to obtain a version of it.” She crossed to the couch she’d slept on and wrapped herself in the blanket there. She was so cold. “Your mom worshiped your dad for all the wrong reasons. She taught you to want to be him. So you did that. Now you’re here with me, waiting for me to make you feel something you can’t even recognize.”

He stuck his hands in his pockets. She was good at this. Whatever it was—playing with his mind and his dick in equal measure. “This is a game for you? I’m rewarded when you get closer to whatever makes me tick?”

She tucked her legs under her. “No. I’ll be completely honest: I want to save my brother. I want to save Boston’s brother. I love that damn dog. The only way to get to you is to let you see what I was, and to force you to see who you are. I want you to change. You’re the key to this. You’re the one who can use Compound E or whatever else you come up with for good or evil long after I’m gone. I want you to be that surf shop guy again. Reset. Do over. Money and power has brought you here. To me. To what only I can do for you.” To prove her point, she closed her eyes and then looked back at him the way he was desperate for.

“Come here to me.” She patted the couch next to her.

There was no ploy. She wasn’t writhing in lust for him. She wasn’t licking her lips. Savannah just opened her arms, her blanket like a cape.

He sat next to her. She wrapped him in her arms and pulled his head gently to her shoulder. And then she hugged him. She cuddled him close, running her hand through his hair.

It wasn’t sexual, though the blood rushing between his legs said different.

“Just be here, Silas. That’s it.” He listened to her inhale and exhale. It was like being dipped in forgiveness and caring. It became everything. He could hear her heartbeat.

She patted his back and placed a kiss on the top of his head. “It’s going to be okay,” she murmured.

He slipped his arms around her waist. The hair on the back of his neck stood up. He hadn’t known he had the hole in him until she’d uncovered it.

She kissed his head again, and he turned his face up to hers, hugging her back.

“Why are you doing this?” He sounded lost.

“Because this is the only power I have when it comes to you: treat you like you matter. Is it working?” She tilted her head, and her ponytail spilled over her shoulder.

He wrapped his hand around it. “More than you know.”

“Watch my eyes. If they start to mirror, you need to run.”

“How do I know you’re not keeping me close so we both go up in flames?” He sat up and took a more dominant position, keeping her caged in his arms.

“You won’t know. But I’ll tell you if I start to feel weird. It’s trust. Without pain. Can you do it?” She still looked at him in that way that she did. “I dare you.”

He was afraid to touch her, to demand more from her, because he didn’t want her to stop. She took his hand from the couch and squeezed it. Supportive. Kind. What was it like to know this? What did it mean to peek into a life he shouldn’t even know about? He’d looked behind a curtain that was sacred.

His throat was dry, his heart pounding. It felt like watching a cloud turn into a tornado, like looking at a tree before the lightning hit.

He pulled her as he stood, lifting her into his arms. “Is this a trick?”

She was still looking at him that way. Goddamn it all. She said nothing. Instead she framed his face with her hands.

“You hate me,” he reminded her, trying to make her stop, wanting to see her come to her senses.

“Not more than I hate me.”

Empathy
. He knew she despised him: her kidnapper, murderer of her family, spoiled asshole. And all at once he halted his efforts to make her see him clearly. She could see him clearly; she just chose not to. And he craved this.

Taking her up the stairs in his arms was easy. She didn’t fight or kick; instead she gave him a dreamy smile. It was like she was hallucinating, but she kept saying
Silas
,
Silas
over and over. So she knew it was him.

When he laid her on the bed, he thought back to the last time they’d been here. He’d wanted to force her. Had it only been the day before? Really? Was it that easy to earn what he really wanted?

He must have mumbled that last thought out loud because she answered him.

“Speaking about who you are isn’t easy. And sex isn’t what you have to earn.”

He stopped. In that moment, he didn’t want to make her do this with him. Not now. It took superhuman strength to stop, but he held himself rigid over her.

Again he must have spoken because she was answering him. God, maybe
he
was the one hallucinating after all. Savannah broke him then, reaching out her comforting hand and taking his from his side.

“Call me Savvy,” she said. “Tonight, call me Savvy, please.” And she pulled him on top of her. Permission. Request. Invitation.

He pulled up the hem of her shirt, then hesitated. He fucking hesitated! He looked at her eyes. This woman he’d watched for months, lusted over via satellite cameras. He’d wanted to reign over her, believed the satisfaction he sought would come only from watching her submit to him.

But now. This. It was more than carnal. The burning in his chest, it was a new life. And then there was the fact that she was deadly. It was almost more than he could take. Were the edges of her pupils turning a bit? Had she just shivered from his touch? Sliding his hand across her stomach and over the lace of her bra, he felt her softness.

He’d bedded so many women. So many times. How this was different, he wasn’t sure. He released her left breast and thumbed over her nipple, watching her gasp the tiniest bit. And then she smiled.

To bring her pleasure that wasn’t a punishment? He never knew it could be this way.

Her own hands explored, pulling his shirt out of his pants—like he’d come home from work, and she was waiting for him. She was good at unbuttoning and quickly exposed his chest. He wanted to be delight for her eyes, so he tensed his muscles. So amateur. God, he was gone in her.