You Are Mine (3 page)

An uncontrollable shiver crept through her and she had to turn away from him, face the fire, to hide it.

But he knew. Oh yes, he did. He always knew.

“Angel.”

“Fuck off, Zac.”

“You won't even trust me with this?”

“Have I ever asked you about your past? No, I don't freaking think so.”

There was a long silence.

The fire in front of her was hot and yet she didn't feel it. The cold had set in her bones, icing her marrow. Nothing was going to heat her up.

“Very well.” Zac's deep, husky voice was expressionless, his upper-class Brit accent polished like fine silver. “Have it your way. But you can't run from this forever.”

The flames burned bright gold, the color of Zac's eyes and just as hot. She put her hands out to try to feel the warmth. “Yeah, actually I can. Just watch me.”

“I have never asked you about that night, Eva. Not once in seven years. Remember that.”

Oh yes, she remembered. He'd never pushed her for answers about that night or anything else to do with her past. Just like she never asked him about his.

Don't ask, don't tell.

They were friends and yet perfect strangers. Which was the way she liked it.

She didn't turn around when the door opened.

Or when he closed it carefully behind him.

 

CHAPTER TWO

“We need that information,” Alex said.

Zac stood by the windows in Gabriel's Meatpacking District apartment, his hands behind his back, looking at the snow falling steadily outside.

Alex was sprawled out on the massive leather couch behind him, Gabriel standing off to the side, his hands in the pockets of his jeans.

It felt wrong to be having this meeting without Eva, but since it was about her, she hadn't been invited.

She didn't bloody invite you to the meeting she was giving either.

He ignored that thought. It was childish and this wasn't about tit for tat. He'd agreed to the meeting because the others had a point—they needed information and Eva was withholding it. That she may have good reason didn't make any difference. Lives were at stake, the lives of his friends and their loved ones.

“I know,” Zac said, keeping his gaze on the falling snow.

“You have any idea why she might not want to tell us?” Gabriel asked.

“I do, but it's not my secret to tell.” It was Eva's and he would never betray her trust. Besides, he only had supposition in any case. He knew nothing about what had happened to her the night he'd picked her up.

Eva had first come into his life in the form of code. A gremlin in the Black Star Security systems. A hacker, exploiting loopholes no one had even known were there. He'd been incensed, since his tech people had assured him that Black Star's systems were impregnable, and so the hunt had been on. He'd spent weeks trying to catch the mysterious hacker known only by the handle Void Angel, but she'd escaped every trap he'd laid.

One night, as he'd logged into his personal account, the screen of his laptop had gone dead and then lit up with a pair of white angel wings on a black screen. Then a chat window opened up and what started as Void Angel taunting him, ended with him offering her a job.

She'd agreed, on one condition: he come to a location she specified and take her away, no questions asked.

So he had, opening the door of his car on an innocuous suburban street, shocked to find a very young woman with silver hair, bloodied and bruised, and dressed only in a man's black overcoat.

His Void Angel. Eva.

He didn't know for certain what she'd escaped from, but not for want of trying. He kept his promise by not asking her any questions, however, he'd privately decided then and there that he'd track down what had happened to her. Find out who had brutalized her. And it had become an obsession. Like the woman herself was an obsession.

Not a healthy one either. She's got her hand around your cock good and proper.

Jesus, he didn't like that thought. Not one bit. The previous night in the club and his general lack of interest in doing a scene with anyone was a fucking worry. A Dominant being led around by his dick. Wasn't it supposed to be the other way around?

“I have an idea,” Alex said slowly.

Zac shook off the uncomfortable thoughts and turned to face him. “You do?”

Alex, his shoulder still heavily bandaged, shifted uncomfortably. “Yeah. Just from a couple of things she's said I get the impression that we share … a common experience, shall we say.”

“What kind of experience?” Gabriel took a couple of steps closer to the couch.

“I think Eva has her own personal Conrad walking around somewhere, if you get my drift.”

It wasn't far from the truth, Zac was sure of it. Women didn't usually turn up bloody and bruised and naked in the middle of the night for innocent reasons.

Women didn't hate to be touched and didn't like going anywhere unfamiliar alone because nothing at all had happened to them.

“Then perhaps you should talk to her,” Zac said. He hated the thought that she might confide in Alex over him, but if that's what she needed, he'd give it to her.

“Me?” Alex gave a wry laugh. “Because I'm so open about all my shit? No, I'm not sure I'm the person she should be speaking to. Eva's never trusted me anyway. In fact there's only one person she does trust, and that's you.”

Tension slowly tightened through his shoulders. Ah, typical Alex to hit on the fundamental problem, the sharp piece of glass embedded in his soul. They didn't know and why would they? That even after seven years of being her protector, her friend, her confidante, her fucking family, Eva still didn't trust him. “She's never told me about her past,” Zac said flatly. “And I promised her I would never ask.”

“But you must know it anyway,” Gabriel commented. “I mean, you have had her investigated haven't you?”

He looked at the other man. “No, of course I haven't. A gentleman keeps his word, Gabe. You know that.”

“A gentleman. Yeah, right.” Gabriel took a few steps over to where Zac stood then stopped, hands in his pockets. “I gotta ask this. What the hell kind of relationship do you have with Eva anyway?”

It was a question that had never come up before. Don't ask, don't tell. That was the only Nine Circles rule. And yet things had changed since Gabriel's quest to find his father had uncovered the complicated puzzle of the Lucky Seven casino and the people who ran it. A puzzle that had tendrils reaching into all of their lives.

Except yours.

Yes. Except his.

Well, the others had come to terms with their pasts and may be happy to share it with all and sundry, but he fucking wasn't. And he wasn't going to start now.

“That's none of your concern,” he said coldly. “I seem to recall a rule we all agreed on. Or do I need to remind you?”

“My stepfather is in the hospital, my sister is in danger, my father was apparently murdered, and we have a goddamned mercenary throwing around threats if we follow up on any of this,” Alex objected from the couch. “Which makes it very much our fucking concern. As I pointed out last night. Or does a rule take precedence over people's lives?”

An instinctive anger turned over inside Zac, the beast in him wanting to protect Eva. Keep her safe.

But no, he couldn't give into it. He'd known these men for nearly ten years, they were friends, and more than that, they were family and they wanted to protect the people they cared about just as he did.

Alex was right. This wasn't only about the three of them and Eva. This went wider, deeper than that.

“I'm Eva's friend,” Zac said. “Nothing more.”

The look Alex gave him was plainly disbelieving. “You're not sleeping with her? And please don't tell me it's because you're a fucking gentleman again, Zac. You might wear a nice suit, but you're no more of a gentleman than I am.”

That was true. Oh, he'd been born one. To Sir Andrew Rutherford and his lovely wife Emma. But he hadn't learned anything from them except how to find a good vein when the ones in your arms were fucked. So you could inject your fix before cold turkey set in. Oh yes, and how to find food when there was nothing but champagne and weeks-old milk in the fridge and no money to buy any because your parents were high and had given all their cash to their dealer.

No, he'd learned how to be a gentleman from the movies he'd gone to see in the Kensington cinema just down the road from his parents' multimillion pound London townhouse. The one that played the old movies, with Clarke Gable and Cary Grant and Alec Guinness. Where men dressed beautifully and drank scotch and held the door open for ladies.

Everything looked happier in the movies. The days were brighter and the nights brighter still. Everything was clean, and people smiled and their stories all ended happily.

He'd learned so much from the movies. How to treat people with respect. How to romance a woman. How to tie a tie. How to be a man.

But Alex was correct yet again. That didn't make him a gentleman. Not when underneath his suit beat the heart of a beast.

“I'm not sleeping with her, no,” he said, keeping his voice mild. “I would have thought any fool could see that.”

Alex lifted his shoulder then winced. “Yeah, well, you're so damn secretive, the pair of you, who knows?”

“You've got a pretty fucking weird friendship if I may say so,” Gabriel commented.

Zac let the remark roll over him. He didn't care what the others thought of his relationship with Eva. “The issue is not about the friendship I have with Eva. It's about tracking down this man she says she knows.”

“Which she won't tell us about, if you remember.” Gabriel's dark eyes were uncompromising. “You're protecting her, I get that. And fuck, so does Alex. Whatever happened to her isn't going to be easy to talk about, and we get that too. But we need to know this. Whatever information she has, whatever connections that man in the video has to any of this, we need it. You know we do.”

Yes, he knew. Just like he knew that this meeting would consist of Gabriel and Alex putting pressure on him to get Eva to spill her guts.

He knew that had to happen too.

But the need to protect Eva had been the basis of his life for the past seven years, and the instinct didn't go away just like that. What they wanted would hurt her, and she'd been hurt too much for him to feel comfortable making her say what she didn't want to say.

She'd had things taken from her, and if Alex was right, he knew what those things were. And what they meant. And how long that took to recover from—if you ever recovered from it.

Maybe you've been protecting her too much. Maybe that's not what she needs anymore.

Zac turned away once more to contemplate the snow. His Dominant instincts whispering to him, telling him what he knew deep in his bones. What he'd been deliberately ignoring for the past several years because he didn't trust those instincts around her.

They'd whispered to him that night he'd found her too, the moment he'd laid eyes on her.
Mine. You're mine.

He hadn't listened then—she'd been only eighteen and clearly marked by male violence—and he hadn't listened later either, after she'd recovered and become Eva King, software magnate. She didn't want to be touched or crowded. She was like a wild creature that went mad at the sight of a cage.

He didn't want to be her cage. He only wanted to set her free.

But you haven't set her free. And now you're chained just like she is.

Lazy and slow, anger stirred again like a bear waking from hibernation.

Fuck, it was true. He
was
chained. By his obsession with her. By his desire for her. He'd created the cage, locked himself inside, then thrown away the key. And all because he'd hoped something would change. That she'd recover and yes, he was a selfish bastard after all, that she'd grow to see him as more than a friend.

But nothing had changed for her and nothing would. She didn't trust him.

You know what you need to do.

He had to gain that trust. Let him take the fear and the pain he knew she still carried with her, a burden she wouldn't let anyone else near. Let him help her find her strength.

But in order to do that, he had to be ruthless. He had to listen to the instincts he'd been ignoring for so long. He had to break her.

A shard of longing pierced him, so intense he couldn't breathe for a long moment. He couldn't say he didn't want this. Couldn't say it didn't make him hard.

He wanted her at his mercy. He wanted everything.

“Very well,” he said, watching the snow. “But we do this my way. I won't have her forced or pushed. If pressure needs to be applied, I'll be the one to do it, understood?”

“Of course.” Gabriel's voice was cool. “Eva is your territory. We know that.”

Perhaps they did. What they wouldn't know is how literally he wanted that to be true. He didn't hide his sexual nature, but he didn't make an issue of it either. Not that he thought the other men would have a problem with it even if they did.

They might if they knew what you wanted to do with her.

Then it would be best if they didn't know.

He turned from the window again, glancing at Alex then Gabriel. “We may not have to take action anyway. She's already investigating this man, and if she manages to identify him and locate him, that may be all we need.”

But not what you need.

No, it wasn't. In fact, he hadn't thought of his own needs for a very long time. Eva had become his mission, his cause, and everything else had come second.

The lazy, long-suppressed anger stirred again and this time he didn't try to force it away. He let it smolder like an ember pressed against dry wood.