He tried and fell.
Which explained why she hadn’t seen him. Mindless of the cameras, she hurried into his cell and knelt beside him. “I have to get you out of here. He’s going to kill you.”
“Won’t.” His voice came out slurry through puffy lips. “He’s selling me to China.”
“What? How do you know?”
“Overheard.”
“So that’s why he had you beaten?”
“Also suspects I see you more than an hour a day. Couldn’t prove it.” He gave her a hard look. “Now he can.”
She helped him to a sitting position, an arm around his shoulders. It was hard to know where to touch him that it wouldn’t hurt. An ache sprung up inside her; he had been beaten because of her, because of a madman’s obsession.
“I was worried about you.”
“Go. Will try to wipe the cameras before anyone notices.”
“The pain makes it hard to focus,” she guessed.
“Yeah. Please go.”
Impotence made her angry. She had spent her whole life obeying orders. She was tired of toeing the line for fear of consequences. Rowan held the unspoken threat of the cells over her to compel her cooperation, and now, the one time she’d dared disobey, Taye was trying to banish her back to the safe walls that held her prisoner.
“Not just yet. When you aren’t injured, how’s your control?”
“Good.” His green eyes reflected anger and frustration. “Might be another reason why he had me beaten. Was nearly ready.”
“Then you just need a few days to heal. Try not to piss him off.” Gillie held up a hand, forestalling his instinctive protest. “I know you love to provoke him, but remember, I can’t get out of here without you. I need you, Taye.”
“I’ll be good,” he growled.
She couldn’t do anything else for him, but she knew who could. Gillie hurried out of the cell, which locked behind her when the door clicked shut. At this hour, Silas would be eating in the small employee lounge. As she’d suspected, he was spooning up some soup while staring at the television. He wasn’t homely per se, just… unnerving.
“Silas,” she said softly.
He turned to regard her with dead, black eyes. “You’re not supposed to be in here.”
“Neither are you, I think. Do you like your job?”
The big man made a sound like an inner tube deflating and studied his enormous hands as if he’d never seen them before. “No.”
“You hurt Taye.”
“I know. Rowan made me.”
“How?”
In answer, Silas turned his head and showed her a faint blue pulsing light, inset behind his ear. Jesus, it had to be a control mechanism. Silas wasn’t an employee; he was a former test subject.
“I’m going to die here,” he said, and went back to his soup.
Suddenly bolder than she’d ever been in her life, she touched his arm. He tensed at the simple contact and looked at her hand as if it were an alien appendage complete with tentacles. “What if I said you could get out? Would you do something for me?”
Silas put the spoon down. “I might.”
“Taye might be able to help you. He could short out that gizmo in your head. I don’t know where that would leave you, maybe you’d revert to however you were before, but at least you wouldn’t be under Rowan’s control anymore. That has to be worth something.”
He didn’t think about it overlong. “What do you want me to do?”
CHAPTER 22
The rug was soft beneath Mia’s bare belly.
Søren held her arms outstretched at her sides. If she was unwilling, she wouldn’t raise her hips for him. She came up on her knees, chest flat on the floor. He wrenched her thighs open, showing her how he wanted her. It was incredibly arousing to hear his harsh, labored breaths as he positioned himself behind her, but his heat threatened to ignite her utterly, leaving her no mind with which to appreciate his abandon.
There was no tenderness in him now, no delicacy. With one rough thrust, he took her with the fury of a man too often alone, desires too often denied. She should have felt vulnerable, and yet she felt as if she owned him, as if her slightest whisper could break him wide open.
“Mia. Mia, I need this,” he growled, sounding angry about it. “I need you.”
“Take me,” she whispered, but she had the oddest feeling it was she who took him.
The sex that time was savage. He was less focused on her pleasure, more centered on exorcising personal demons. They fired his ferocity, driving his thrusts, but she found it easy to lose herself in the storm of his desire.
Later, she lay in Søren’s arms.
He’d gotten easier with touching, more accustomed to affection. At least he no longer recoiled when she reached for him. To her surprise, he was the most patient lover she’d ever known. This anomaly aside, he spent hours nuzzling the curve of her throat, appearing to luxuriate in the feel of her skin. He kissed as if he had nothing else to do for the rest of his life: slow, drugging kisses, where his lips played with hers until she went boneless.
He had just lifted his head from one such kiss, and his gray gaze glittered as he gazed down at her. “I can’t get enough of you.”
“Is that a bad thing?”
“A little alarming.”
“How come?”
His eyes answered where his lips would not: I need you, and I don’t want to. As if he could not help himself, he kissed her again, this time fiercely. By the time he pulled back, she was panting, her peace supplanted with sexual arousal. With him, it only took a touch or a look and she was ready to do the wickedest things.
“I love your mouth.” Feather light, he brushed her lips with his fingertips, tracing the contours. “After.”
“After you’ve made it red, wet, and swollen. A wanton mouth.”
He sucked in a breath. “Yes.”
“You’re not as civilized as you pretend.”
“I’m not civilized at all. You’d do well to remember that.”
“How can I forget?” Mia flexed her fingers, looking at the faint marks that encircled her wrists. “You lost control completely.”
“You drove me to it.”
So she had. Remembered power surged through her. Driving this disciplined man past restraint-when he had borne so much-made her a little crazy. Reckless.
“And you took me on the floor like an animal.”
He caught her hand. “Stop. Or I might do it again.”
“That’s supposed to be an inducement to stop?”
She wished she knew more about him. The bits and pieces she’d gleaned elsewhere didn’t encompass the whole. If she could put all the pieces together, then-
Maybe I can learn how to love him. Søren wasn’t like other men; this, she understood instinctively. It was miraculous she’d come this far, blindly. His lover.
Søren laughed. “You make a good point.”
There would never be a better moment to broach this subject. “Can I ask you something?”
“I think you just did.”
“Another something.”
Wariness pervaded his voice. “What?”
“How did they come to take Lexie from you? You said they injected you through a free vaccination.”
“That’s not something I talk about.” Ever, his tone implied.
“Maybe you should.”
“Maybe you should mind your own business.”
“You are my business,” she bit out, exasperated.
“Why in the hell would you think that?”
It was now or never. She could spend the rest of her life wondering what would’ve happened if she’d been brave enough, or she could be brave.
“Because I love you.” The words dropped into the silence like stones into a still pond.
“Love me?” He spat the two words as if they were poisoned meat. “You don’t have any idea who I am.”
Søren pushed her away and sprang to his feet. If the cabin were larger, surely he’d be pacing. Instead, he took a position at the window, shutting her out with a turn of his back. She’d expected as much.